PapaScott

Hey Nineteen

2018-12-27T06:44:34+00:00

She thinks I’m crazy but I’m just growing old… Hey Nineteen

Fun Fact: When Hey Nineteen was released, I was in fact not quite 19

The Mystery of the Missing License Plate

2018-06-16T08:59:31+00:00

Our son got his drivers license in February, and it’s been a life-changer… for him and for us! No more getting up at 6 in the morning to get him to the bus stop (we live in the country so we have to drive to the bus stop, at least the one to get him to his school). No more driving back and forth to the airfield on weekends so he can partake in his chosen hobby. Our side-job as taxi drivers was over.

Coincidentally (or not) in February I also got a car of my own, so (counting the E-Up as half a car) we have 2-1/2 cars available for 3 drivers. That works out fine. In kind of reverse pecking order, our son usually takes our biggest car (Renault Kadjar, a compact SUV which just barely makes the grade compared to other parents’ vehicles when picking up kids from private school) since he’s usually pulling a trailer with a glider (which he organized for a few months as kind of a time-share). That’s fine, we just have to plan our trips to Ikea for days when the big car is actually here.

His Abitur exams started in April, so between and after exams he’s been driving off to gliding competitions throughout Lower Saxony for days at a time. They camp out on the airfield, and when a glider has to make a field landing someone has drive out in the field with a trailer to pick them up, so the car gets pretty dirty both inside and out. But after one particular trip the car was not only dirty, but was missing the front license plate.

Of course our son had no idea what happened. His first thought was cool, we can drive through photo radar traps without being caught! The plate was in a clip-frame, which I noticed was broken in one corner, and not knowing what kind of roads (or non-roads) he was driving I figured the plate had simply shaken loose and fallen off.

Driving a car with a missing license plate is illegal, of course, so first we had to report the missing plate to the police. The officer was quite nice, and didn’t bat an eye when I said it could have fallen off anywhere between Lüchow, Helmstedt and Porta Westfalica. We would have to apply for new plates, and a new number, since our lovingly chosen number would now be invalid for 5 years. We had a copy of the police report in the glove compartment in case we got pulled over. I even made a fake plate with Magic Marker on cardboard and taped it to the front bumper.

The car is leased, so we don’t have the original papers. They have to be sent to the DMV by the leasing company which should take 2 or 3 days but actually took 2 weeks. (After one failed trip to the DMV we found out you can call to check if the papers are in without standing in line.) But finally this week after 100€ in costs and a new frame we have a new lovingly chosen number for our Kadjar.

Meanwhile our son is busy with a 4-week internship at a local metal shop (required for his chosen college major, aerospace engineering), so we have the Kadjar for ourselves. But just the other day, my wife came home with the admission that she had dented the new license plate! But is the frame OK, I asked, since that’s how we lost the old plate! To which our son replied, I know, I broke the frame on the Kadjar back in March, but the frame did hold up for two months after that, didn’t it?

Which solved the Mystery of the Missing License Plate.

Netlify

2018-03-15T07:13:18+00:00

I didn’t mention it when I moved from GitHub Pages, but for the past couple of months this blog has been hosted at Netlify, a platform for building and hosting static websites.

It works very well with jekyll, the software that generates this blog, and means I no longer need to build the site on my own machine to publish it. I just push my changes to my repository at GitHub, which Netlify continuously monitors for changes, and the blog it automatically updated, usually within a minute.

It also offers free one-click managed SSL, a global CDN, and is free for unlimited single-user sites, whether commercial or personal.

And combined with Netlify CMS, I can edit and post directly from GitHub and don’t need a local jekyll installation at all. But that’s a subject for another post…

Block E

2018-01-19T10:47:06+00:00

I’ve been asked about my profile photo. Wikipedia has this to say about Block E.

After 1950… lower Hennepin Avenue became known as a place for drunks, crime, and prostitution. Block E was the center of the squalor. The 620 Club in 1971 gave way to Moby Dick’s, and became known as one of the city’s most seedy bars. Unsavory establishments, including rough bars, flophouses, and an adult movie theater settled in on Block E in the 1970s and 1980s…

By the 1980s, the block was one of the choice places in Minneapolis for punks to hang out and it became a creative breeding ground for the local punk music scene. Block E was also known for its cheap rent, drawing such establishments as Rifle Sport Gallery. From the mid-1980s forward, the Minneapolis police had a constant presence in the area; it was normal to see squad cars or a police van parked between the northbound traffic lanes and contraflow bus lane.

Block E looked pretty much like this when I started college in Minneapolis in 1980. The owner-operator of the McDonald’s was my wife’s first boss, she worked at the City Center location across the street.

Block E was demolished in 1988 and became a parking lot.

Hard to Get

2018-01-17T10:26:29+00:00

You’d think in the current German coalition talks that the SPD could at least play hard to get.

Now I know German politics is a strange beast, but I would think that the SPD side more has more pull here. The Union is the side that needs desperately to form a coalition with Merkel in charge. The SPD never wanted a new grand coalition (so they claim), you’d think they could take or leave it, and demand a high price to take it.

Then again, what do I know?

Winter Workshop

2018-01-12T07:29:40+00:00

How our son spent his Christmas vacation (at least when he wasn’t studying for his preliminary “Vorabi” exams):

Winterarbeit Diesen Winter bin ich der Flugzeugbetreuer unseres Astir CS Jeans in Wenzendorf und so hab ich die Gelegenheit genutzt, meine neuerworbenen Fähigkeiten und Kenntnisse als Zellenwart in FVK-Bauweise anzuwenden, indem ich ein neues Lüftungsgitter einlaminiert habe. Es heißt ja "Asche zu Asche, Harz zu Harz" oder so ähnlich 🤔😄 Mit dem Gesamtergebnis bin ich sehr zufrieden und wertet den Harzklumpen mit dem neulackierten I-Brett optisch zu mindestens ein bissel auf :D (Auf dem letzten Bild sieht man das I-Brett in der alten Lacke - so hässlich sah der Rest auch etwa aus) #winter #winterarbeit #flugpause #astir #grob #flugzeugwart #zellenwart #laminieren #harzen #gfk #harz #ichundmeinharz #glasfaser #köpergewebe #segelfliegen #gliding #soaring #segelflugzeug #glider #sailplane #wenzendorf #hfbfluggemeinschaft #lxnav #s80

A post shared by Christopher Hanson (@gliding_aviation) on Jan 11, 2018 at 9:50am PST

New Screen Saver

2018-01-05T17:07:46+00:00

How stunning is this? A perspective that will never get old... 😍 ___ Photo by @rudanmanuel. If you want your photo to be chosen as #picoftheweek, tag it with #Elbphilharmonie and follow @elbphilharmonie on Instagram.

A post shared by Elbphilharmonie Hamburg (@elbphilharmonie) on Jan 5, 2018 at 8:07am PST

Spam Filter

2018-01-04T21:19:45+00:00

A post shared by Scott Hanson (@papascott62) on Jan 4, 2018 at 10:40am PST

When wiring our addition we also installed an integrated spam filter. I’ve exposed part of it here. Internet comes in through the yellow cable and spam flows out through the tube to the municipal waste water system.

Katchi

2018-01-04T09:40:45+00:00

It’s time to start blogging again, and I can think of no better way to start than these lyrics from Nick Waterhouse…

Doo wop a doo wop, shoopi doobi doo wop
Doo wop a doo wop, shoopi doobi doo wop
Doo wop a doo wop, shoopi doobi doo wop
Doo wop a doo wop, shoopi doobi doo wop…

Although shouldn’t that “shoopi” actually be a “shooby”?

Tee Time For Two

2017-08-12T08:39:08+00:00

My gmail address is fairly generic, and apparently there are other people who would like to be PapaScott but can’t. So I get a fair amount of mail intended for other PapaScotts, including:

confirmation for my tee time at a golf club in Pennsylvania
notice of automatic deposit of my salary from the State of Tennessee
my reservation for one week at a mobile home park in Georgia
advertising from a car dealer in Argentina
an appeal in French to donate (or sell, I can’t tell) my blood plasma to a clinic in Paris
invitation of regular lunches of ex-military folks in Tennessee
regular notices of transactions (with scans of receipts) from my Well Fargo bank account in Georgia

And I’m not even looking in my spam folder. I have enough keeping track of my own schedule without having to worry items for total strangers!

Travis CI

2017-07-23T12:07:20+00:00

So, yeah, I figured out how to use Travis CI to build my Jekyll blog and push it to GitHub Pages, and figured that I would actually write something for it to build rather than just fiddle with scripts and yaml files in the background.

The Future Part 2

2017-02-26T09:03:24+00:00

Last fall we converted our restaurant in Dibbersen into a Restaurant of the Future. Now we’ve remodeled our Hamburg, Winsener Straße restaurant so now we have doubled the future!

The lobby here has a more urban theme that fits our gritty part of Hamburg. I was worried it would be too dark, but the spots of color make it look brighter live than it appears in the photos.

It of course has all the innovations in Dibbersen, plus we now serve “Barista Quality” coffee at the front counter, meaning that the espresso drinks are made with the portafilter machine in McCafé.

With all this future we need to take time to catch our breaths. Our 3rd drive-thru restaurant on the Autobahn A1 at Rade will join the future in early 2018.

Song of the Day: I Can't Drive 55

2017-02-09T05:37:21+00:00

Update:
This isn’t for me, despite the title, but I’ll take it. :-)

The Future Is Now

2016-11-07T06:03:55+00:00

We were closed 11 days for construction, but now our restaurant in Dibbersen has been opened for 3 days as a “Restaurant of the Future” and so far we are very happy with it!

The first thing you notice as a guest is the brighter, more spacious lobby, as well as the self-service terminals, or kiosks. There you can enter your order and pay by either card or cash. Of course you can still go to the cashier and verbally give your order just as before.

The second thing you notice is that the cashier does not then go to assemble your order. There is a separate station for that, and you can either go there to pick up your order, or you can choose table service. You pick up a chip, find a table, and thanks to the magic of bluetooth we can find your table and bring your order to you.

The third thing you notice is that all burgers are made fresh to order. This “Made For You” system has been running for years in the US, but is new in Germany. The heated bin¹ where products could be kept for 10 minutes is now history. Our products are now made one at time instead of an entire tray at a time.

We were wondering how quickly we could adjust to the new system, but the first 3 days went very well. The kitchen is more organized and less hectic, and even it gets full we can recover quite quickly. In service our people enjoy that they now have time and opportunity to talk to our guests, and with our new look and new system they have plenty to talk about.

And even I learned enough about the new system that I can help out in the kitchen without messing everything up. :-)

Funny how in US English a bin is where you put things to keep, but in UK English a bin is where you put things to throw away. ↩

If Clinton Wins

2016-11-02T10:10:52+00:00

A couple of days ago Dave Winer wrote a piece about Trump winning. So what if Clinton wins?

It will be like the status quo only worse.

The large group of Trump who feel estranged from the system will still feel estranged. This estrangement is certainly not exclusively American, see Brexit, the Front National, or the Alternativ für Deutschland. This group will remain and I doubt that Clinton is the type of leader that can win them back.

The Republican party will remain dysfunctional, maybe even to the point that no Supreme Court justices will be confirmed at all. Look forward to more standstill and government shutdowns. The “Lock Her Up” faction will not become silent, they’ll probably become louder.

Abroad, relations with Russia will continue to worsen and the conflicts of the world will continue, with new ones arising.

All in all, though, we’ll be pretty happy with it, because it could have been much worse!

Expecting

2016-11-01T09:56:32+00:00

On this All Saints’ Day we are happy and proud to announce that we are expecting!

Wait, no, that’s not right… damn you auto-correct, we’re too old for that. No, we are happy and proud to announce that we are expanding, in Hamburg-Harburg!

On December 1st we will be purchasing the existing McDonald’s restaurants in Phoenix Center and Harburg Arcaden. They are so-called satellites, located in shopping centers with a limited menu and low volume (about 1/3 the sales of a free-standing restaurant).

We already own the Marktkauf Center satellite in Harburg, and all three stores are just a couple hundred meters apart. Our store manager there will now have her hands full with triplets!

And as we are right now converting our restaurant in Dibbersen to Restaurant of the Future (re-opening on Friday!) with Winsener Straße to follow in February, Frauke and I have our hands full too! :-)

Done!

2016-10-31T17:14:14+00:00

It took 10 years to build and is 10 times over budget, but the Hamburg’s new concert hall Elbphilharmonie in the HafenCity is complete. The first concert is in January, but the builders handed it over to the city today.

Live from #Hamburg: #Elbphilharmonie is ready for opening (window lighting reads 'DONE' in German: FERTIG) pic.twitter.com/l5pLLaBSkS
— Thomas Michael G. (@ThomasMichaelGe) October 31, 2016

During the day it looks more like this.

Hoffentlich schwindelfrei ;) Fensterputzer an der #Elbphilharmonie https://t.co/RX3IYSu8XU
Bild: Marek Santen pic.twitter.com/v5Mc6sLJal
— hamburg.de (@hamburg_de) October 31, 2016

The Stupid Majority

2016-09-23T19:23:55+00:00

This election is a good reminder of the basic principles of democracy: stupid people vote. Not only that, any democracy is ruled by a stupid majority.

Think about it. If you believe that you are of above-average intelligence, and who of us doesn’t, then by definition there is a majority of voters more stupid than you. And since stupid people generally don’t recognize their own stupidity, almost every one of us is faced with a stupid majority.

However, if you are stupid, and you know it, you can rest assured that there is a smart majority out there to make the decisions for you.

But the average person, of average intelligence, the average person has a great responsibility. They have the deciding vote. They decide whether the majority is smart or stupid. Our fate rests in their hands. May they choose wisely!

But they can’t. They are only of average intelligence.

So we are doomed to be ruled by a stupid majority. But that is not altogether a bad thing. All the political systems where only smart people make decisions have failed very badly. It is the stupid people who save us from ourselves.

(And I bet you thought a post with this title would be about Trump supporters. Or Clinton supporters. Fooled you!)

Fifteen Years On

2016-09-11T19:02:52+00:00

This screenshot from scripting.com is pretty much how I first learned the the 9/11 attacks. A low-res picture on a news website from my office in Hamburg. 3 in the afternoon. The next day I was able to put my thoughts into words. More or less.

And next day came the headline in the Hamburg newspaper “Americans! We are with you!”, and at the same time, the first clue that the attackers came from Hamburg. All I knew then was that my country and world would never be the same again. I was far away, and grateful for the internet where I could at least try to fathom how the country I had left a few years before was changing. Without me.

And today. My son who was an 1 year old then is now 16, nearly an adult. My country started two wars in revenge that solved nothing, made everything worse, and haven’t really yet ended. Mission not accomplished. The current round of politics and presidential candidates don’t seem to offer much hope of any improvement.

So I think I’ll just listen to The Rising a couple times through to remind of me of how I felt and how things could have become better. But didn’t.

Vinyl Anniversary

2016-09-06T07:47:05+00:00

Today is our 33rd anniversary. In 4 months it will be 33-1/3. Then it will be a LP record.

Million Euro Overdraft

2016-08-05T16:56:33+00:00

This happened over 9 years ago, I think it’s safe to tell the story now.

When my wife bought our first restaurant, she set up a corporation (GmbH) for the new business. However, our lawyer was lazy, or slow, or something, and for our start of business the registration of the GmbH had not yet been approved by the local court. No registration, no firm, no business loan could be paid out. With a 7-figure purchase price due that day.

No problem, says the bank, we’ll book the purchase from your private account, even though our account balance was more like 3 figures and not 7. We’ll increase your overdraft limit until the GmbH gets registered. No problem.

So to this day I have a screenshot of electronic banking with an balance that day of minus one million Euros.

We thought that was pretty funny until we tried to buy groceries and our bank card got denied. We had to call the bank again to increase our limit a bit more so we could eat.

1999.io is simple. And simple.

2016-05-05T08:43:01+00:00

The past few weeks I’ve been trying out 1999.io, the new blogging software by Dave Winer. You can either try it out at his site my.1999.io (you just need a Twitter ID to log in) or you can install the server on any system that can run Node. Being a server guy I of course installed my own (on a cheap 3.50€‚/mo VPS), and used it to write my last few blog posts.

I like it because because it’s simple. And simple. Simple to write with, simple to work with.

It’s simple to write with. You just open the editor page and type. To update your text, you just click on it and type. There are some simple formatting options, but nothing that gets in the way. When you update, though WebSocket magic anyone reading your post immediately gets the update.

And on the server it’s simple to work with. There’s no database, just files in open formats readable as text, JSON, OPML, RSS, HTML. Formats you can use for other purposes if you are so inclined. Even the HTML files for each post contain the JSON for the post, which I first thought was redundant but now see is brilliant. It’s like the web page contains it’s own DNA and can re-create itself.

These open formats allow one to do things with the output that go beyond the server. For instance, I copy the output of my server to an S3 bucket at 1999.papascott.de, which can probably handle load better than my cheap VPS :smile:. It’s not yet coupled to my main blog on Jekyll (right now I’m using copy and paste), but I imagine it wouldn’t too much cleverness to achieve that.

I hope someday to be able to use 1999.io as a blogging central, with the ability to send my posts to my blog, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Medium, or wherever, but keeping my original posts for myself. I’ll let those big silos show my work, but not own it.

Gliding 2

2016-04-27T16:38:59+00:00

This is how our son stays out of trouble on weekends. At 16 in Germany he can fly solo, but yet not drive a car. :-)

How to build 3000 pages in Jekyll in less than 4 seconds

2016-04-25T07:24:47+00:00

Last year I converted my Wordpress blog to Jekyll. My 16 years of blogging are now saved as text files which Jekyll renders into static HTML, which I then push to GitHub where the blog is now hosted. I mentioned then that it took Jekyll some 3 minutes to render my 3000 or so blog posts, which is kind of a drag since the default is to rebuild the entire site every time even a small change is made.

Actually, the latest version of Jekyll improved build times considerably. It can now build my 3000 pages in about a minute. But when making changes, that’s still too long to wait.

However, using a trick, I can now build those 3000 pages in 4 seconds. The trick seems pretty obvious to me, but I’ve not seen it written up anyplace, so hence this post.

The trick, of course, is to not build all 3000 pages. For older posts use jquery to load in parts of the layout that might change, but leave the HTML file alone. For me, those parts are the sidebar and the recent posts. I build HTML snippets for those divs and load them in like:

$( "#sidebar" ).load( "/includes/sidebar.html" );

Right now, on the Jekyll side I don’t want it to rebuild posts from before 2015. I’ve put all those in a _posts/older subdirectory and added an exclude: directive in my _config.yml:

exclude: [_posts/older]

On the HTML side, ever since I started blogging, even way-back-when with EditThisPage, my posts have been sorted by date. I need to tell Jekyll not to erase the pages I’ve chosen not to rebuild (and it’s too bad _config.yml doesn’t understand wild cards)

keep_files: [archives/1999, archives/200, archives/2010, archives/2011, archives/2012, archives/2013, archives/2014 ]

At least “archives/200” covers an entire decade in one entry. :-)

And that’s it. When I do want to rebuild to entire site, I can comment out those two directives and let ‘er rip. And being hosted at GitHub, you can see all my gory source files in the source branch at https://github.com/papascott/papascott.github.io

Prince

2016-04-23T21:03:58+00:00

I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray…

When I lived in Minneapolis, I used to think we were cooler than everyone else because we had our own resident musical genius. That’s not true of course, but he made us seem cool. And even after he was rich and famous, he stayed in Minnesota. Most of the time, anyway.

And now in Europe, even before last week I could say I’m from Minnesota “where Prince is from”, and for a few moments I’m hip and cool. At least until we change the subject.

And maybe, even though I was just a casual fan, that’s why his death has saddened me. I’ve lost a piece of home. Ich habe ein Stück Heimat verloren.

To this day, I keep a copy of Dirty Mind (1980) on my current mobile device. It was my first Prince record. It’s an imperfect album. It’s sparsely produced, it almost sounds like a demo. And the lyrics, well, Prince was the artist for whom the term “explicit content” was invented, and they distract from the music. But it’s tight. Every note, every beat, on every track hits. Just listen to the 2nd side (this was back when albums had sides), with Uptown-Head-Sister-Partyup, beginning to end. It still blows me away.

(My favorite track, though, is on the first side, When You Were Mine. Mr. LoveSexy turns into a bat-shit-crazy ex. Both funny and sexy as hell.)

The Ants

2016-04-18T15:40:38+00:00

Our house turns 20 years old this year. And every spring the same thing happens. The ants come into the kitchen for a few weeks. Then they disappear.

Ours is a good, solid German house, made of brick. But we live out in the country, and out in the country one has to deal with critters and creepy-crawly things. The doors and windows are tight, but there is obviously a crack in the outside wall to the kitchen. Every spring the ants wake up, get hungry, come inside the wall, and then maybe behind the cabinets, and find an entry to the kitchen.

Every year they find a new entry. I’ve heard that ants have collective intelligence, and that it’s probably passed down from generation to generation. They are probably more intelligent than we, since every year we forget that the ants are coming. And then it takes us several days to find their point of entry.

Since we can’t think like ants, we have to wait until a whole bunch of them have come in so we can see their trail. Then we get out the ant spray, secure the entry, and wait a few days see if they find a new entry and come back.

They usually don’t. The spring weather gets warmer, and I presume the ants then find it easier to find their food outside rather than risk encountering ant spray inside. But they have the knowledge of how to get into our kitchen, and their offspring will use that knowledge next year, to find a new entry.

Here is this year’s point of entry, and our weapon of choice. We’re planning on renovating our kitchen this year. Maybe we’ll find that crack in the wall and get it patched.

Student Exchange

2016-04-05T17:50:38+00:00

We have an exchange student from Italy with us this week (his family hosted our son for a week last fall). We were a bit worried about how to keep him occupied, since we’re out in the country and far from the school. We needn’t have worried. The students (hosts and guests) hang out in Lüneburg after school and they only come home to sleep.

BTW, German is cool in that it was a different word for grade and high school students (Schüler) than for college students (Studenten). We’re talking about Schüler here. And that my wife and I met when she was an exchange student (Schüler) in Minnesota is totally beside the point!

Gliding

2016-04-05T06:43:17+00:00

Great shot by my flight instructor @simon_bacher 42 minutes in blue thermals and lots of spinning 😰😅 #segelfliegen #gliding #soaring #thermik #blauthermik #thermals #900m #wenzendorf #ask13 #d8964 #segelflugzeug #glider #sailplane #gopro #gopropilots_ #sobock #soobock

A photo posted by Christopher Hanson (@fseddh) on Apr 3, 2016 at 10:27am PDT

Where and For Whom to Vote

2016-02-19T16:48:02+00:00

Like Will Rogers, I am proud to not be a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

And true to that spirit, as a Democrat living outside the United States, for the current presidential campaign I not only have to decide for whom to vote, but also where. (For my foreign readers following the US election, yes the process is complicated, and my description will make the impression that it is even more complicated. That is deliberate on my part.)

I can vote (in my last state of residence) in the Arizona presidential primary on March 22 (which, by the way, is not a primary but instead a presidential preference election, since the actual primary for state and local candidates is in August). However, the Democrats have an organization for Democrats living abroad (called, appropriately enough, Democrats Abroad) which is entitled to send delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Eight of those delegates are superdelegates, beholden to no one but themselves, but thirteen delegates are pledged. And to choose those pledged delegates, they hold the Democrats Abroad Global Presidential Primary.

And just like in an official presidential primary (or preference election), I can even go to a real polling place to vote. In Hamburg! On March 5! At the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung on Rathausmarkt! (hold on, are we in cahoots with the German SPD on this?) Or at a number of other locations in Germany, or even around the world. If wasn’t already a member of Democrats Abroad, I could join on-site at the polling place. If I couldn’t make it to a polling place, I could vote remotely, by email, fax or snail mail.

So while I could vote in my former home state of Arizona, it makes more sense for me to vote in the global primary, since we Americans abroad have unique issues for our candidates to be aware of (like taxation, and FATCA, and taxation).

So now I know where I will vote. Now I just have to decide for whom.

(In all fairness, there is also an organization for Republicans abroad, but you guys don’t get a primary. You’re not even officially part of the Republican party. Sorry.)

Will You Still Love Me When I'm Fifty-Four?

2016-02-13T08:45:19+00:00

I guess the answer is yes!

Anniversary

2015-09-06T07:00:00+00:00

I used to write a blog post for our anniversary each year. Nowadays I just use Facebook and Twitter.

32 years together and still going strong! pic.twitter.com/aWQZ5emsuy
— Scott Hanson (@papascott) September 6, 2015

25 Years

2015-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

Another half decade, another milestone. Just five years ago I was waxing poetic about how we had already been in Germany for 20 years, and now it’s already been 25 years. Strangely enough my passport from then bears no entry stamp for 1 September 1990.

At the time our entry into Germany was uncertain. Reunification was in the air, everyone knew it was coming, but the details were still being negotiated behind closed doors. We boarded our plane to Frankfurt on 31 August without knowing our fate. Luckily for us, while our plane was in the air, the “Einigungsvertrag” was signed by BRD Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and DDR State Secretary Günter Krause, clearing the way for our entry into the soon-to-be unified Germany the next day.

That document did however leave several details open. It never was determined whether our cats would remain American citizens or whether they would obtain German citizenship.

Taking your Place

2015-05-25T07:00:00+00:00

For our son’s Confirmation yesterday I gave a toast that went quite well. It sums up pretty well how I feel right now about our son and parenting, so I’ve modified it a bit and posted it. I wrote it in English so my mother could follow along, but I gave it in German, translating on my feet.

I’d like to take this chance to talk directly to you, my son. This is one of the few chances that I know you’ll be listening. At church the pastor talked about how Confirmation is a decision, an active decision, that you make. It is also an positive action… you are finding and taking your place.

You are of course taking your place in the church. We were all just there, of course. The church is a human institution, of course, it is not perfect. But the humans in the church usually do the best they can. And the church has been around a couple of thousand years… if you have a question or a problem, chances are someone has come to the church with that before and it can give you advice.

Confirmation is also a family event. They have all come to celebrate not so much because they are interested in your faith but because you are taking your place in your family. Confirmation has played a role in both our families, in Germany and in the US, and is something that binds them both. It is a family milestone, a sign of a new generation, and time and life moves on as it always has. Time only moves in one direction and at one speed. It always gets to its destination, even when we want to take detours.

In rural Germany Confirmation is also a community event, much more so than in the US. It is the line you cross to become an adult. For your parents our town is a place we moved to, but for you it is where you grew up, your home, your Heimat. And now you will be taking your place in your community. You will no longer sing for candy on Pentecost, but plant trees with the young men. Later you can graduate from the youth fire dept to take responsibility for your community with the active fire dept. A hometown is something precious. A place where you can put down roots, find your peace, a place to belong. Your older relatives can tell what it is like to lose your hometown, your Heimat. It is something to be cherished in your heart.

Finally, you are taking your place in world. Unlike in our town, in reality becoming an adult is not a solid line to be crossed. It’s a process that you have now started, and maybe never ends, and process that you are now taking over for yourself. For your parents it means that we have taught you pretty much even thing we can, we cannot “raise” you anymore. We can’t tell you anything anymore, as you remind us when we try to say something you disagree with. We have to start letting go, to stop setting rules and instead give advice and let you make your own mistakes. We are very happy and very proud for what you are and what you will become. I am certain that you have the qualities for success, in every sense of the word. Your self-confidence, your sense of fairness, your intelligence and stubbornness… a positive stubbornness, I should point out. It’s OK to dream big, that’s the only way big dreams can come true, just have a flight plan filed, just in case. As pilots say, flying is the second most exciting thing in life. The most exciting thing is landing.

Today is your day. Cheers, Prost, auf Dich!

See What Sticks

2015-04-30T07:00:00+00:00

So now that I’ve changed my blogging platform, I have something to blog about: my new blogging platform!

From the WordPress eXtended RSS file of the contents of my blog I found I had exported 3273 posts. Jekyll re-renders every post every time a change is made… on the default template it takes 3 minutes, but on the Lanyon template it ran over 20 minutes before I cancelled the build. That’s why I started with only a few dozen posts.

I then changed my archive strategy, using yearly and monthly archives similar to what I had used with WordPress instead of the pagination used in Lanyon, and lo and behold the build took only 2.5 minutes. The disadvantage is that GitHub won’t run the jekyll-archives plugin for me, so I have to render the site locally and push the rendered HTML to GitHub. I can live with that.

The next question was whether Google (and everyone else) could find the old links on the new site. Jekyll is able to use the same archives/:year/:month/:day/:title/ permalink stucture I was using before. But were all my links the same as before? Do they all still work? Well, that eXtended RSS file contains all the permalinks that WordPress had generated…

 <link>http://papasc.home/archives/1999/12/05/it-worked/</link>
 <link>http://papasc.home/archives/1999/12/06/week-37/</link>
 <link>http://papasc.home/archives/1999/12/07/ready-and-waiting/</link>
 <link>http://papasc.home/archives/1999/12/09/linux-fever/</link>
 ...

(Yes, that’s a fake URL. My hoster timed out producing the eXtended RSS file so I had to use a local install.) I then ran the links through a shell script I found on Stack Exchange:

 #!/bin/bash
 while read -ru 4 LINE; do
     read -r REP < <(exec curl -IsS "$LINE" 2>&1)
     echo "$LINE: $REP"
 done 4< "$1"

And, indeed, all the links work. Whether the content still makes sense is another question, but PapaScott is back online in its entirety!

Transition

2015-04-23T07:00:00+00:00

So maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, but this blog looks a little bit different than a week ago. Behind the scenes it looks a lot different. After over a decade of blogging on WordPress (I actually started using its predecessor B2 in 2002), I’m now on the static site generator jekyll. My posts have been exported to text files. No more mysql database, no PHP, no more web interface.

So everything is new and things are still broken. I don’t have all posts imported yet, I’m only back to 2012 and not 1999 when this thing started. There are a lot a worthless one-line posts from the olden days, since back then we didn’t have Twitter and Facebook yet for worthless posts. So I have some work to do. But I’m looking forward to it.

The design, however, is absolutely fabulous, even on mobile, and for that I can take absolutely no credit. It’s the lanyon theme for jekyll by @mdo, who co-wrote (Twitter) Bootstrap, and I thank him for making his work available to us mere mortals.

Confirmation

2015-04-20T07:00:00+00:00

Last week we bought a confirmation suit. Of course we went to Policke in Hamburg. It’s the perfect place for young (or older) men to shop. It has the feel of a 1920s haberdasher, full of dark little rooms connected by narrow halls and staircases. You’re met at the front door by the head sizer, who determines your size with a glance and with a slight movement of his eyes directs you to the room where your size is stocked. Once there, you nod at the salesman (they’re all men), who from your nod determines the style and price range you want. You’re in and out in 10 minutes. No words are necessary at any time.

Well, maybe not quite. :-)

The confirmation will be at the end of May, on Pentecost Sunday. My mother will be flying in from the US. My father won’t be there, of course. He made a huge impression on his grandson, though, despite living an ocean and thousands of miles away. He thought of his grandfather when he chose his confirmation verse*. We also legally added his grandfather’s name as an additional middle name for him. He will carry his grandfather’s name the rest of his life, and he will be confirmed with it next month.

So I guess my father will be there after all.

*Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

How I Punked Facebook

2015-02-10T06:13:25+00:00

It took me nearly two years, but I finally did it. I was able to get the better of Facebook. Yesterday I was able to celebrate my birthday without a single greeting on social media, even if my wife very nearly gave me away.

It was heaven! It was bliss! I was living free of the distractions of the digital world, if only for one day. My day! For me, me alone!

I hope your day was a good one too.

Where Were You?

2014-11-09T16:59:03+00:00

Where was I 25 years ago as the Berlin Wall fell? I must confess, I don't remember exactly. If I had known the news would radically change our lives, I might have paid more attention.

We didn't realize it at the time, but our lives in November 1989 were "in between". In between jobs, in between continents, in between everything. We had just moved to Arizona, following her old boss who didn't have a job for her yet. I was working temp jobs hoping to find something permanent (one of them eventually did). We thought Arizona would become our home. We were in love with the desert, the sun, the lifestyle, everything.

We had, however, picked a horrible time to move to Arizona. The savings and loan crisis had broken out, and the economy was already stagnant. And in the weeks and months that followed, the soon-to-be-reunified Germany became more attractive to us. We thought we could work there for a couple years and come back when the job climate in Arizona was better.

But where was I when I heard the news? Today I have no idea. In my car listening to NPR? At home watching CNN? With my wife when she got a call from her Hungarian friend Gabi? I just know that less than 10 months later, we were here.

Thank you to everyone for everything

2014-10-11T04:08:07+00:00

Thanks to everyone who sent condolences for my father, be it on PapaScott, Facebook, Twitter or even with written words on paper. I debated posting publically about my feelings, and now I'm glad I did.

I'm currently "between the continents", so to speak. I returned yesterday from the US, and fly today to Dubrovnik for 4 days on business. I still have some thoughts on the past week, the funeral, the Midwestern traditions, and the hotdish. I'll share them once I get the chance.

Absence

2014-10-04T11:08:14+00:00

My father died Thursday morning, age 81. I wasn't there yet, I had only made it as far as London. He was always impatient, he never liked waiting for anyone when he was ready to go.

It's not like we weren't ready for this. He's been on oxygen for 11 years, at first only at night, and later 24 hours. I always wondered how I would feel when the time came. Now I know. I feel his absence. Absence, as in the opposite of presence.

Now I'm home with my mother and brother to together go through the rituals. We spoke with the funeral home yesterday, made the decisions, gave details for the obituary, looked at the plot, picked out flowers. Viewing is Sunday afternoon, prayer service that evening, funeral 10:30 Monday morning. We tried to do things to make it informal and not all too a somber and sad affair.

The obituary will be online. That's a thing now I guess. If you have Flash music will play, you may want to turn it down first.

Our son arrives from Germany today. He brought his bagpipes. I hope he's up to playing.

Godmorgen

2014-05-30T09:35:17+00:00

We decided to spend some money on ourselves rather than the business for a change. When we built our house back in 1996, when we got to designing the bathroom we had run out of both money and imagination. We ended with boring hospital-white. We* tore everything out, replaced and rearranged the fixtures, threw out the tub, built a new wall, replaced the door and window, and installed a walk-in spa-like shower. After two and half weeks without a bath, it's done enough that we can use it. We're missing a few details yet, like towel hooks, toilet paper dispenser, mirrors, and cabinets.

*Of course, "we did" actually means "we hired professionals to do", but we did build the Ikea Godmorgen sink cabinet ourselves.

Update: I've now added panorama photos und put them all in a Flickr album.

Phone Tricks 2014

2014-03-31T07:20:30+00:00

To keep in touch with home I find it handy to have an US phone number. We never got in the habit of using Skype; a cordless phone is just a lot handier than turning on the PC. For a while I had a US Skype Number with a Minnesota area code. However, at €5 a month it's not that cheap, and worse, my parents were not able to reach the number from their cell phones. And if I forward the calls to our regular German number, I pay Skype rates for the privilege.

So I did some hunting around, and discovered the VOIP provider Anveo offers US numbers pay-as-you-go for $2 a month ("Personal Unlimited" plan). You can then forward the calls to a regular number at their normal rates, but since we have VOIP at home anyway, I just set them up as an additional account and pay nothing. Calls to the US cost $0.01 per minute, slightly cheaper than our main provider. They have servers in both the US and Germany. We've been with them for 2 months, and they seem to work just fine.

In case you're wondering, our main VOIP (for home and home office) is on Sipgate Team with a Gigaset C610 IP base station. I tried first with a Fritz Box, but never managed to get it working reliably, probably because the Fritz Box was not our router, but behind our router.

The other trick to plan mobile phone and data for our visits to the US. Prepaid credit expires quickly in the States, so if you're there just once or twice a year it's likely cheapest to set up something new each year. This year we're trying service from Red Pocket sold by ReiseSIM.de in Germany. The SIMs are pre-activated, you can add credit before your trip, and you can dial direct without going through a gateway to call Germany. Calls are $0.10/min in the US and $0.11/min to Germany. Network is ATT, and for the data plans "tethering is encouraged" (that was our mistake last year, no tethering, and we constantly fought over the one tablet with internet). Our son will be taking a phone on his Easter trip to Minnesota, and we're in Orlando for business at the end of April, so we'll see how it goes.

B-52's

2014-02-09T08:39:32+00:00

EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: I've hidden my birthday on Facebook, but you might be able to guess my new age from the title of this post.

New Car

2014-01-28T21:01:58+00:00

Three years have gone by, the lease has expired on our Volkswagen Sharan mini-van, and it's time for something new. The Sharan was way too big for us. We thought we could use the extra space for our business, but in the 3 years we transported 8 passengers exactly one time. In that same time had to replace bumpers 3 times (twice my fault, once my wife's) because the Sharan so damn wide you're scraping something before you know it. In that sense, good riddance.

We're on good terms with our local Volkswagen dealer, and we decided to downsize to the newest member of the VW line, the Golf Variant, a station wagon. It was released in September, we ordered right away, and took delivery at the end of January (that is, today).

Now, my wife gets a lot more excited about cars than I. She'll study the web sites and the specs to find exactly what she wants. For me, a car is simply a vehicle to take me from A to B. She's excited about the new car and what it can do. I'm just happy that it's smaller and we're less likely to tear off a bumper.

And I hope that choice is right because the lease is for another three years.

Five Pounds of Post

2014-01-03T15:37:14+00:00

Here's a week's worth of documents, weighing in at 2.4 kg, for our accountant, in case you've wondered if we've done any work over the holidays. It's a bit more than usual since it's end-of-month, we normally have 1.0 to 1.5 kg per week. (Yes, it's all scanned as well, but we don't have a digital workflow with the accountant yet.)

Happy New Year 2014

2013-12-31T15:24:39+00:00

Happy New Year! Here's our son's latest film creation. It's not for the faint of heart.

Ikea Update

2013-11-02T07:28:55+00:00

For those following our Ikea saga, we did manage to make it to Ikea a couple of days ago. In case it wasn't clear from the original post, my main objection to the first trip was that it was on a Saturday when the roads and the store would be completely full. My wife is redesigning our bathroom, and it was important to her that she show me the items in person at the store so I would feel involved in the decision.

However, our purchasing using the self-service registers was an utter failure. Of our 14 items, we managed to leave 2 items unscanned at the table. I swear I spent and hour looking for our new blinds until I realized that they weren't on our receipt and they never made it out of the store.

Ikea

2013-10-26T17:06:40+00:00

Should I be worried when, we have a free weekend alone without our son, that my wife's best suggestion for an activity together is a trip to Ikea?

Should I be even more worried when, after I express my doubts about going to Ikea, the next day she changes her mind and says I don't need to come along after all?

Oslo Cruise Again

2013-09-09T16:41:47+00:00

We managed to return from our weekend and to escape without any long-term repercussions, so I'm sure it's safe to reveal where our destination. For the occasion of our 30th wedding anniversary, we took the ferry from Kiel and spent the weekend in Oslo!

Some of you will now ask us, "Hold on, isn't that the exact same destination you had for your 25th wedding anniversary?"

Well, yes, 5 years ago we also took the ferry to Oslo. But it wasn't exactly the same the last time. For one, this time we stayed overnight, at the lovely Radisson Blu Plaza, a hotel that is, well, tall, with a lovely view of the Oslo skyline.

For another, we took a bicycle tour though the city with Viking Biking, which was the perfect way to spend the afternoon, especially as the weather was nearly perfect (5 years ago it was cool and cloudy). It was very pleasant, low-key (central Oslo is relatively flat) and entertaining, and the tour highly deserves its high rating on Trip Advisor.

And finally, we treated ourselves to a 5-star cabin, and booked a separate cabin for our son. He could be Mr. Independent on the ship, while we had some time for ourselves.

Just to make us feel old, there was a concert by Soundgarden next door to our hotel. We were born 10 years too early to appreciate them, and our hotel was full of nostalgic 40-something fans all younger than us. Happy Anniversary!

Same procedure as every year

2013-09-06T04:10:39+00:00

We're not sure about the statute of limitations for international crimes against common sense, but just to be on the safe side we're skipping town for the weekend, for the case it's longer than 30 years. We'll be back Monday evening when we're sure the coast is clear.

German Surveillance

2013-08-10T12:18:48+00:00

All the talk of the "NSA Affair" in Germany reminds of a time when we were definitely spied upon by the German government.

In the early '90s we were visiting a relative in Bonn, which was still the German capital. We were exploring the government district and were admiring the Bundeskanzleramt, the Chancellor's office, occupied at the time by Helmut Kohl. We were outside the entrance gate, and behind the Bundeskanzleramt was an office building with the distinctive 3-pointed Mercedes star.

One of us mentioned how utterly appropriate it was that a symbol of German industry was looking down upon the Chancellor's office when suddenly the loudspeaker on the gate crackled.

"The Star of Bethlehem."

That was the absolute highlight of our trip to Bonn.

Heros without Glory Revisited

2013-06-14T17:54:42+00:00

Today the Bundestag commemorated the 60th anniversary of the June 17th workers' uprising in East Germany in 1953. President Gauck spoke, linking the uprising then with the struggles for freedom throughout the world today, but the ceremony has merited only a brief mention in the German media. Ten years ago I blogged about a documentary on the uprising which impresses me even today, particularly this photo.

Helden ohne Ruhm is a fascinating documentary of the 1953 uprising shown in ARD last night. It features interviews with demonstrators, VoPos, Soviet soldiers, and widows. It's being rerun tonight (RBB) and tomorrow (SWR) if you missed it. The photo is from newly discovered footage from Leipzig. The girl holding the sign was imprisoned until 1962.

Grinding it out

2013-05-20T09:27:33+00:00

Since my last fitness post I've been progressing at making progress.

With a 5K run at the local Stadtlauf in June as a goal, I started running every other day following the run/walk program in The Beginning Runner's Handbook. That program is actually for a 10K, so the 5K at the Stadtlauf should be a piece of cake (although it's on asphalt and might be hot), right? The program calls for 3 runs a week, however I'm cheating a bit by sticking to every other day. As a result I'm already on Week 9.

I actually did the 5K at the Stadtlauf in 2010, but I didn't train sufficiently or correctly and ~~nearly died~~ was very sore the following week. My run yesterday was 55 minutes (with 3 1-minute walking breaks) and nearly 7K and I felt fine (slow pace with pulse in the 130s the entire time). The Stadtlauf should go just fine. And the 10K training won't go to waste, I'm intending to keep it up for the Volkslauf in Jesteburg in September (through woods in fall weather).

On the days I don't run I've been working out at the fitness center, so except for one day last week when I hurt my foot I've been doing fitness everyday for 8 weeks, since the week before Easter. And I have the results to show for it. I've lost a further 3 kg in the meantime, my weight is at 90.x (sounds like a radio station frequency), and my body fat is down too. My goals are 89.x by the end of June and 84.x by the end of September.

This was also a test of fargo.io for posting to WordPress. (Note: to separate paragraphs you seem to need blank line directly after each one.) I promise my next post will be about something more interesting than my improving fitness.

Salt of the Earth

2013-04-04T18:07:38+00:00

One of the cool things about 30 years of marriage (yes, it's going to be THIRTY YEARS this September) is that it's still possible after all that time to discover minuscule areas where you have irreconcilable differences. Or maybe "re-discover" is the better word, since for all we know we already knew all the things that annoy us about our partner but had conveniently forgotten them.

Take, for instance, salt. My mother is a health-conscious nurse, so even in the '70s when I was growing up we didn't eat a lot of salt. She always cooked with a herbal mixture to replace salt. I never got in the habit of adding salt at the table, and don't think of a salt shaker as an essential piece of cutlery.

My wife, on the other hand, will salt everything, often without tasting it first (especially if I have cooked it). She gets nervous if she sits at the table and there is not a salt shaker within reach. We sometimes have 3 or 4 salt shakers on the table at one time, since she often brings one to the table herself to make sure there's one there. And by my observation, her use of salt is moderate compared to some in her family and in Germany in general. I sometimes think that the heavy use of salt can so deaden the taste buds that one forgets food can have taste other than salt.

So when my nutrition class mentioned that cutting down on salt was not only healthy, but good for weight loss, I had no problems putting that into effect for myself. It however opened up a new source of conflict. I would cook a healthy dish without salt, my wife would grimace and reach for the salt shaker, I would roll my eyes, and our entertainment was guaranteed for the rest of the meal.

Some peace has been restored to our household through the use of a salt substitute (which, strangely enough, is sold by the publisher of the nutrition class). It's based on potassium chloride, and tastes something like chicken soup.

It doesn't work that well at the table, though. The last time my wife asked me to pass the salt (which I had conveniently placed at the opposite end of the table from her), I instead handed her a newspaper article with the headline "Millions of deaths from excessive salt consumption". Just my way of saying I love you, honey! (And after she threw the newspaper in my face, I handed her the salt.)

Back to the Grind

2013-04-02T20:36:58+00:00

Forgive me, internet, for I have sinned. It has been over 3 months since my last blog post.

And about the time of that last blog post I noticed that my weight and fitness were both leaving much to be desired. (I'm sure my wife noticed long before I did, and I'm sure she tried to let me know about it, and I'm even more sure I did my best to ignore her.) My weight was brushing up to triple-figures in kilograms (that's 220 pounds in dog years), and that was my wake-up call.

For the past couple of months I've been trying to put myself first as far as diet and exercise go. Instead of just thinking about going to the gym, I actually went to the gym three times a week. As motivation I bought a Spotify subscription for my cell phone and a set of Plantronics BackBeat Go wireless sport headphones (as recommended by vowe… with gadgets you can do much worse than to buy what vowe keeps).

I also retook the MyLine nutrition course at our gym. Having taken it once before, it all sounded familiar and I was able to take more of it to heart than the first time. The first change they recommend is to eat 5 times a day. That's not as easy as it sounds. Avoiding alcohol is also a challenge. :-)

But between the workouts and the nutrition and the positive motivation I was able to see results after two months. 6 kilos lost. Body fat reduced by nearly 3 percentage points. Waist and hips 3 cm smaller. Not bad for a guy who just turned 51.

If you're doing the math, you'll know my weight is not yet ideal. (To help you calculate BMI, my height is 174 cm. As my trainer said, if I were 15 cm taller my weight would be ideal.) So'll I'll be sticking with the program for another 3 months.

As it turned out, my next goal has been handed to me on a silver platter. Our business co-sponsors the local "Stadtlauf" (city run) in June, and the organizer told (not asked) my wife, "and your husband will run 5K this time". I'll take that as a challenge.

More Blessed to Give

2012-12-29T07:38:37+00:00

I'm not a particularly materialistic person. It's said that it is more blessed to give than to receive. If that's the case, then I had a particularly blessed Christmas. I've been blessed by a ratio of approximately 10 to 1.

A part of this is due to the arrangement that my in-laws have with one another, to not arrange gifts among the adults, but only for the nieces and nephews and then with a strict price limit. In this arrangement everything is systematic and pre-arranged without any risk of surprise or forethought. The suggested gifts are specified to the last detail, usually accompanied by a ISBN number or an Amazon link. Those who have no specific wishes simply wish for iTunes gift cards. Larger suggestions can be combined among families or with Oma, with a complicated accounting of how the costs are shared and who pays whom for what.

As you may know, our gift for Christopher this was a somewhat expensive musical instrument, a set of small pipes imported from Canada. My idea was that the in-laws could give a share of the instrument as their gift to Christopher: the set budget for Christmas and birthday would cover one-twelfth of the cost. I assumed this would be entered into the post-Christmas cost-of-gift accounting. But for some reason, perhaps because the small pipes did not have an item number at Amazon, the in-laws had all instead prepared envelopes with cash for Christopher. That was somewhat awkward as he already had gotten the pipes on Christmas Eve, so I had to snatch the cash from the cards. One of them had even pasted the bills with double-sides sticky pads to the card, which could only be removed with 10 minutes elbow grease and nail polish.

For my gifts within the family I did my best to break the rules about avoiding surprise and forethought. For Christopher I found a couple of his favorite US groceries (Honey-Nut Cheerios!), for my wife some Brazilian jewelry and her specific wish for a bag for eyeglasses on her running belt (she lost a pair in the woods a couple of months ago; if you see a wild boar wearing bifocals you know who they belong to). For both I found a print of a hand-drawn map of London to remember our recent trip.

I'll admit I'm being selective about counting gifts received. I'm not counting cash from the US (saves on shipping and I can pick out what I want), and I'm also not counting the colored sugar-and-spice calendar given to both my wife and me. I will also admit that the 50-year-old male is not the easiest to pick out presents for. I probably wouldn't know what to get myself.

In the end my best and only present is a blue terry-cloth bathrobe. I already had a blue terry-cloth bathrobe, but it was 10 years old and my wife decided it was too ragged to look at anymore. The new robe is longer but not as warm. It will also be a constant reminder of how blessed I was this Christmas.

The Good People and The Criminals

2012-12-18T20:52:29+00:00

In the wake of the awful shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last week I've been searching for the perfect words to say. I still haven't found them, and I may never will, but my high school friend Beth posted her thoughts on Facebook. They are pretty much the most reasonable words I've read so far, and with her permission I repeat them here...

There is something missing from the discussion about guns and violence and mass shootings going on this past week. The underlying assumptions about people. The "guns don't kill people, people do" folks assume there are two clear distinct groups of people: criminals and good people. If good people are armed, they can thwart the criminals. We can't "punish" the good people in our attempts to control criminals.

I reject that view of the world. We are all just people. We are all capable of being loving and caring. We are all capable of being selfish and fearful. We can all be overwhelmed by grief, terror and yes, even rage.

I readily confess to my darkness. I get pissed off while driving. I become too protective of the ones I love. I rage against the machine. I reach the end of my rope and become irrational. And when I do, the world is a safer place because I don't have a gun on my person.

I enjoy shooting. I really really do. And I have pretty decent aim. But I think we are all safer for me not having a gun on my person at all times.

When does a "good person" who deserves to have a gun become a "criminal" who we need guns to stop?

I maintain we are all a bit of both.

Blue Light Special

2012-12-05T18:06:08+00:00

We just bought one of these at Amazon to try out for our restaurants... if it works out we might buy 3 more. It's an battery-powered alarm clock with siren and flashing police light. Can anyone guess why we might want this? Hint: we're not waking up any sleepers.

Here's the German title at Amazon: Signalwecker 'BLAULICHT' mit Sirenenalarm - Tatütata... Aufstehen... Der bekommt jeden wach!

Update 10 Dec 2012 Our product has arrived, and as you can see it's not half bad (although difficult to operate with one hand).

London for Absolute Beginners

2012-11-30T21:03:13+00:00

Some random points from our visit to London last month.

Taking the cheap train from Gatwick to London makes a whole lot a stops and is probably not worth the trouble
If you are at all claustrophobic and get cold shivers from the elevator scenes in Speed, you certainly want to avoid the Covent Garden tube station at all costs. Only way out are crowded elevators or 193 steps.
If you're German by nature and get to Buckingham Palace 90 minutes before the Changing of the Guard, the friendly bobbies will make sure no late-coming tourists will cut in front of you.
The employment profile of the hospitality industry in London is dominated by Eastern Europeans. Pub food is, however, tastier and less expensive than we had been led to believe.

Rob Roy is a Scottish pub near Paddington where you can be served haggis, if your pipe-learning son is so inclined and you can wait for the cook to come in for the evening shift.
People in London are colorful in every sense of the word. Quite refreshing.

The streets and train stations are impeccably clean, even by German standards.
The tube stations seem to have been planned to ensure the longest possible walk when changing lines.
Greenwich is a bit out of the way but a nice quiet base to stay. The DLR gets you to central London in 20 minutes, and Sainsbury's Local will meet all your basic food and drink needs. Plus you can head to the Royal Observatory and stand on the Prime Meridian.
The Tower of London lives up to the hype. The Making of Harry Potter studio tour is expensive, but worth it if you're into Harry Potter.
EasyJet is a cheap airline in every sense of the word.
We'll be back.

Touch 'Em All

2012-10-25T21:53:42+00:00

I was somewhat stunned to read that today is the 25th anniversary of the Minnesota Twins winning the 1987 World Series. Given that I am now 50, that is half my life ago. And while a sports event certainly didn't play a direct role in our lives, it marked a milestone. 1987 was an important year for us that eventually brought us to Germany.

For one thing, we actually saw a lot a Twins games that year. We lived in south Minneapolis, we could easily bike to the Metrodome, and the bleacher seats in center field cost just $3. And they were the best seats in the house, since we were right behind the center fielder Kirby Puckett, and could see him make his spectacular catches. We watched at least a dozen games live, maybe even 20, but did not attend any playoff or World Series games.

For me, that fall of 1987 was the beginning of my PhD program at the University of Minnesota. But I was beginning to have my doubts as to whether I was cut out for an academic career, and the choices involved to get academic funding. As an Agricultural Economist, let's just say the locations for research are not among the metropolises of the world (Davis, Iowa City, Norman, College Station, etc.). So it was really the beginning of the end, and 6 months later I dropped out.

As for my wife, in the fall of 1987 her first boss was in the process of selling his McDonald's franchise in Minneapolis to move to Arizona. Her superior and many of her colleagues would move to Arizona too, and after a year of sticking it out with the new franchisee, we ended up moving to Arizona as well. We weren't able to find a place with her old boss in Arizona, but made the connections that brought us to Germany in 1990.

So October 1987 was a turning point in our lives, and it just happened that the Twins won the World Series that month. Was it really 25 years ago?

Antalya and London

2012-10-08T05:56:01+00:00

Despite my attempt to start a travel blog a couple of months ago, we don't actually get out and about that much. Owning a business and having a school-aged child just cramps our style somehow. So it's somewhat unusual that this month, we have not just one, but two (count 'em. two!) foreign trips planned.

The first is this week and actually a business trip. We all (we're taking number one son out of school for 3 days) fly to Antalya, Turkey, for the annual fall franchisee meeting at some luxury hotel built for Russian oligarchs. It will be warmer than home, though, and we are extending our stay by a night so we have all day Saturday to ourselves before flying back just in time for school and work on Monday.

The second half of October our son as fall break from school, and I'll be cashing in my birthday present from my family, a 5 night trip to London. Of course, "birthday present" means 1) the entire family comes along, and 2) they only come up with the idea and I get to do all the planning myself. Despite having lived in Europe for over 20 years, we've never been to London so it will be all new to us. All I know about London is that it's wonderful and expensive, so we'll be staying in Greenwich and be taking the train a lot to see the sights.

After that we'll be all travelled out for while.

They are all here for your anniversary, Miss Sophie

2012-09-06T12:54:31+00:00

Hennepin County Government Center - The Scene of the Crime

Twenty-nine years ago today was the Tuesday after Labor Day when, as Bruce Springsteen put it, "the judge put it all to rest".

These days we can only joke about how long it has been. We can still quote the ~~English~~ ~~German~~ (whatever) TV classic "Dinner for One" to one another: "You look younger than ever, love! Younger than ever!" Of course, the line may wear out someday. If someday this blog ceases to be updated and you hear about a particularly gory family drama* from northern Germany, you'll know I tried the line once too often.

*Family drama (Familiendrama) is one of those phrases that in German means something completely different than in English. For us it might mean a TV show suitable to watch with your kids, or perhaps the "discussion" that ensues when a teenaged daughter tells her parents that she is pregnant. In German it refers to a murder (often a murder/suicide) within a family.

Travel Blog

2012-08-16T17:05:05+00:00

We've just returned from 2 weeks' vacation. I've heard that one can earn fame, fortune and lots of SEO love by writing travel blog posts, so I'll try my hand at it.

We visited my parents' lake cabin in Minnesota. They bought the cabin when I was a kid, and my wife and I have been going there for 30 years, so we didn't really see anything new.

Insider tip for air travel: if you a German traveling to the US, make sure your ESTA is up to date. Otherwise you might have the joy of flying standby without your family the next day! Trust us, we know!

Since we stayed with my parents, we got a really good deal on lodging. You have to really be an insider to get that rate, though. No way to get it online.

We saved money by not renting a car, but having my parents take us from and to the airport. I doubt that they would do that for anybody else. We did spring for some gas.

As for the local cuisine, you have to catch it yourself from the lake. Or buy it yourself from the meat market. Either way, no one cooks it for you. That's what the gas grill is for.

As for local people and customs, we did have a mini family reunion the first Sunday we were they. Since I've known my relatives all my life, I didn't really get any new insights on local life (although a couple of them did rag on me for not blogging often enough).

I hear that including a picture can increase the influence of travel blog posts. Here it is. My wife has several dozen more just like it.

I am not an Expat Blogger 8: Sexual Orientation

2012-07-27T16:05:41+00:00

I am not gay. Well, most expat bloggers aren't either, but there's a fair number who are. Must have something to do with the fact that you can marry who you want here.

(part of a series)

I am not an Expat Blogger 7: Food

2012-07-27T08:55:09+00:00

(Note: the name of the series has been updated to more accurately reflect the spirit in which it's intended.)

I don't miss American food. It seems every expat blogger goes through a phase where they're missing some type of food from home, usually something heavily processed and extremely unhealthy. Comfort food. Some expats never snap out of it.

Maybe it's because our business is food (my wife says to add that you're all welcome to buy all the comfort food you want from us!), or because I learned economics and understand supply and demand, but I was never all that emotionally attached to food from home. If there's something you miss, learn to make it (or a close approximation) yourself.

And you can find peanut butter and Oreos at pretty much any German supermarket these days.

(part of a series)

I am not an Expat Blogger 6: Beer

2012-07-25T06:03:34+00:00

I don't drink beer. Well, not much anyway. We used to, but we've now switched to wine.

(part of a series)

I am not an Expat Blogger 5: Public Transportation

2012-07-24T05:27:45+00:00

I don't use public transportation. Most novice expats will gush about how in Germany they don't need a car at all, and with bike, bus, tram, subway, commuter train, or whatever, they can get everywhere they need to go.

We do have a public bus that stops in our village. During rush hour it stops every hour, during the day every two hours. That might be OK for commuting to school or work (the times are coordinated with trains to Hamburg), but it's not particularly convenient for daily life. And since there are no shops in our village at all, not even a bakery, we'd be stuck without two cars.

That said, we do try to use public transportation to get to Hamburg when we can. But we drive a car to the station.

(This also reminds me of my favorite German joke: Alle reden vom öffentlichen Verkehr, aber keiner traut sich! It can't really be translated, but Verkehr can mean either transportation or intercourse, so think of public Verkehr.)

(part of a series)

I am not an Expat Blogger 4: Vacation

2012-07-23T08:29:42+00:00

I don't get 5 weeks vacation. Or 6. Or 4. In Germany there's a Bundesurlaubsgesetz that regulates vacation time for employees. The legal minimum is 4 weeks per year, although most industries have contracts that call for more. Our employees get 5 to 6 weeks vacation, depending on longevity, as set in our Manteltarifvertrag.

But as a business owner you're on your own. And our business tends to be busiest when other people are enjoying themselves (weekends, school vacations and holidays). We tend to take a couple days off time and again rather than a bunch of days in one piece. The work is always waiting for us when we get back.

Next week, though, we are heading to Minnesota for a couple of weeks. The cell phones are staying home.

(part of a series)

Fire Camp

2012-07-21T20:41:45+00:00

We interrupt the "I'm not an expat" series (AKA "expats don't understand me and noone else does either") for an important dispatch from the home front. Our village of Lüllau (population 500) is usually pretty quiet, but today the population expanded 4 times and the noise level as well. Our local volunteer fire department is playing host to the Kreisjugendfeuerwehrzeltlager (literally "county youth fire dept tent camp") with 1500 participants on a field just outside our quiet village.

This empty field (where we celebrate the village Easter fire every year) is now covered with tents, a field kitchen, toilets and showers and everything to keep 1500 youth and adult volunteer fire fighters happy for eight days.

And of course our son is roughing it just a couple hundred meters away from home!

All in all, the camp might be a little loud, but our village of Lüllau will have the best fire protection in the whole county for the next week!

I am not an Expat Blogger 3: Experience

2012-07-20T06:51:53+00:00

I had done this before. You know the feeling of being alone in a strange culture, not knowing the language, coming to grips with customs you don't understand, and in the end coming to grips with everything and realizing that, yes, not only can you survive in a such an environment, you can thrive.

Been there, done that, and long before I came to Germany. At age 17 I was an exchange student in Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil. While Germany can be strange and wonderful at times, it is nowhere as strange and wonderful as Brazil. For a boy from the American Midwest, I was most impressed the huge difference between rich and poor (not to mention the beaches, the caipirinhas, and the music).

But the main thing I picked up was self-confidence. I knew if I could make it there, I could make it anywhere. So moving to Germany was, emotionally speaking, a piece of cake.

(part of a series)

I am not an Expat Blogger 2: Soccer

2012-07-18T07:28:13+00:00

I say soccer not football. Because that's what it's called in my language. Nuff said.

(part of a series)

I am not an Expat Blogger 1: The Language

2012-07-17T17:10:24+00:00

I've always thought of myself as an "expat blogger in Germany", but lately I'm not so sure. Reading blog posts from my fellow expats usually results in shrugs or a WTF. Maybe I'm becoming out of touch, or I'm not a very typical expat… (the first of a series):

I don't speak English. In real life, outside the internet, I speak almost no English at all. We speak German at home (my wife and I made a deal to always speak the language of the country we're in to one another… we'd be in big trouble if we ever moved to France!). My job (business) is all German. Other than the proprietor of our local Baja California restaurant, I know no native English speakers (and she's actually a US-born German).

Back in the '90s I worked for an English-language publisher, where we had a mostly-English-speaking office (Brits slightly outnumbering Americans). These days, though, about the only English I speak is when I phone home to my family, or I'm helping my son with his English homework from school.

Mysterious Invitation

2012-07-06T06:32:36+00:00

Yes, we knew that July 1 was the 5th anniversary of our business, but we didn't pay any attention to it until we received a mysterious invitation in the (e)mail, to a "Candle Light Dinner" at our restaurant in Dibbersen.

We arrived to find a maître d' at the door, a table set in a quiet corner with candles, flowers and tablecloth, a printed menu, and a hostess ready to take our order.

We chose to split the special of the day, the Steakhouse Classic in the current promotion as a McMenu with 2 side salads, a side order of Chicken Sticks, and a vintage 2012 Cola Light (Cola Zero for me) to drink. We passed on desert, deciding instead on an Espresso Macchiato to round off the meal.

All in all it was a very nice gesture and great fun, and many thanks to our crew for the idea and the invitation. However, it got us thinking: maybe other guests would enjoy an exclusive, fun and special candlelight dinner at our McDonald's? Maybe it's something we could offer…

Brawl on the Highway

2012-06-30T15:01:26+00:00

We always thought life in our sleepy little village was pretty quiet, but think again! Freely translated from the Nordheide Wochenblatt (30 June 2012):

Brawl on the Highway: a driver goes bezerk over failure to yield

When reason fails, some people rather trust their fists. That was the case last Thursday afternoon. The result: an injury and a whole list of charges. A driver from Buchholz (51) nearly cut off another driver (59) while pulling out of a driveway in Jesteburg. Both cars continued towards Lüllau when the older driver motioned for the first driver to stop. Both drivers get out of their cars, and the 59-yr-old driver swung a punch at the 51-yr-old. He was able to block the punch and threw one of his own, losing his cell phone in the process. The female companion of the 59-yr-old then picked up the cell phone and threw it onto a nearby field. Despite an intensive search, the cell phone was not found. A judge is scheduled to tell the two drivers what he thinks of their antics.

(Our son's reaction: Which highway was that? I want to find that phone!)

Follow Me to Bubble Tea

2012-05-26T09:30:55+00:00

Time for a business post! A couple days ago I teased on Twitter that big changes were coming to German McDonald's in the next couple of weeks. I was going to wait until the marketing started before going into detail, but now that the Handelsblatt newspaper has spilled the beans, it's OK to come out now.

The big one comes on June 11, when McDonald's starts selling bubble tea in McCafé. Bubble tea is a trend drink that originated in Taiwan and is fairly new in Europe. It's basically sweet tea with fruit syrup and tapioca "boba" pearls or flavored jellies. The bobas or jellies sink to the bottom of the cup and can be sucked up through the straw. With 2 sizes, 3 types of tea, 7 flavors, and 6 flavors of bobas and jellies, there are over 250 combinations possible. Bubble tea is sweet and certainly not low-calorie, but generally contains less sugar than soft drinks. There will be a coupon in the the June coupon booklet if you want to give it a try.

Bubble tea is the fastest growing segment of the fast food industry and is very popular for 13 to 20 year olds. Bubble tea shops generally import their ingredients. The jellies and bobas for McCafé Bubble Tea are produced in Germany especially for McDonald's and contain no additives. Bubble tea is a first for McDonald's in Europe (maybe worldwide?), and if it is successful here we're sure other countries will follow.

The second change is not so spectacular. Starting June 4 McDonald's will sell Brötchen for breakfast, three types of normal German Brötchen: Kaiser-, Korn and Laugenbrötchen, either with traditional condiments (butter, jam, honey, Nutella) or as a sandwich. Brötchen have been very successful for McDonald's Austria and we think they will be here, too. The marketing people call it "local relevance". We just think that if you want to sell breakfast in Germany, you have to sell what Germans eat for breakfast, so it's a change we welcome.

The other changes are already out: a new McDonald's Deutschland iPhone app with in-app couponing (starting with the June booklet, not exactly cutting edge anymore but it's a start) and new lower price-point "McDeal" menus that cost 3-something instead of 5- or 6-something like the "McMenüs".

That's a whole lot to learn and train the next three weeks, but hey, if we wanted jobs where each day is just like the day before, we'd be in a different business. :-)

A Tale of Two Glasses

2012-05-16T08:16:29+00:00

One of the joys of getting older is deteriorating eyesight. Having been near-sighted all my life, my near vision is now getting worse so that I'm now in effect no-sighted.

I have experienced the joy of bifocals for the past couple of years, and have learned to unconsciously tilt my head to the appropriate angle for looking things near and far. Things in the middle (i.e. somewhat beyond arm's length) are problematic, since they are in the transition zone of the lens and one can only focus on a thin horizontal stripe at one time. That makes it difficult to look at a larger surface, like, say, a computer screen, without constantly bobbing one's head to continually adjust the angle.

But modern optometry has the solution: a separate set of computer glasses focused at the distance between your eyes and the monitor. Voilà! I could see the entire screen at once for the first time in ages! However, every medical wonder has a dark side. Or multiple dark sides. The first is having to keep track of two pairs of glasses. Given that one can only wear one pair at a time on one's face, the other pair is always someplace else, and that someplace else is never the same place where one needs them. (I have an app to ping my iPhone when I've misplaced it. There is no such app to ping my glasses.)

Another new problem is that no matter which pair of glasses I have on, they always feel like the wrong pair. Even when they are the right pair. I was at least smart enough not to order identical frames for both glasses. The computer glasses have a ridge on the temples, so I can always feel with my fingers which pair I have on, because I can't tell just with my eyes.

The third problem is that one has to remember to switch glasses when leaving the computer. (Switching glasses when coming to the computer is easy to remember, since the first thing one notices is "Oh, I cannot see the screen!") One cannot competently perform normal tasks when one can only see items exactly 20 inches from one's face. More than once I've caught myself driving away from the house and realizing only then that I have the wrong glasses and cannot see past the windshield. Not good.

So computer glasses are both a blessing and a curse, and have made my life infinitely more complicated than before.

Space Filler

2012-04-30T15:51:52+00:00

This post is here only to put an A for April in the 2012 row of the archive list in the sidebar. That's all.

In the meantime I can offer this memory from a simpler time (at Holy Kaw via sa-steve on Flickr).

MacMini Media Center

2012-03-18T09:17:29+00:00

For my 50th birthday, I decided to splurge a bit on my present. After all, you only turn 50 once (although admittedly one could say the same for 49 or 51). I decided to get myself a fancy DVD player.

As you notice, it's not really a DVD player. For one thing, there's no place to insert a DVD. For another, it's actually a MacMini computer with full HDMI output.

I had made a couple of attempts before to attach a media player to our TV. The latest attempt was a WD TV Live, to which you attach an external hard disk or connect to network shares. The user interface leaves much to be desired, and networking for us (over a powerline interface) worked hit or miss at best.

The monkey wrench in the works is that we still have an analog TV, a 10-year-old 32" Samsung I can barely lift. We're going to renovate our living room Real Soon Now™ (first intended for 2010, now possibly in 2014), and we'll get a new TV when we have that done. The Samsung has only 2 SCART inputs, which makes attaching multiple devices rather difficult. Given the analog TV, the HDMI output goes to waste (for now). All our video is standard definition, anyway, so attaching a HDMI-to-analog converter doesn't degrade anything.

A pleasant surprise with the Mac Mini is that networking over powerline works just fine. I can control it from my MacBookPro with Remote Desktop, it can stream files from elsewhere on our home network just fine, I can rip DVDs to it from other computers or start Handbrake on it to convert ripped DVDs to more useful formats. To start movies in the living room we've got a Harmony One remote that can be paired with the Mac Mini.

As for the software, I knew in advance I'd be wanting Plex, which is so cool I'll be writing a whole separate post about that.

Update: There are a number of good tutorials on setting up a Mac Mini Meia Center. For me a good starting point was the Mac Mini Media Center Project series by Youseph Tanha.

Our Adventure with the Bagpipe

2012-03-16T22:38:08+00:00

A few months ago our son announced he wanted to learn the bagpipe. The Scottish bagpipe. And wear a kilt. At first we thought it was just a phase, and we laughed it off. And ignored it.

But our son kept insisting. And looking up bagpipes on the internet. And kilts. So my wife and I decided to swallow our prejudices about bagpipes, and got him a "starter kit" for his birthday in December. It turns out to learn bagpipe you don't actually play a bagpipe for the first year or so, since it's rather complicated to keep the bag full of air and play music at the same time. You start out by learning the notes with a "practice chanter", which resembles the fingering part of the bagpipe and has a similar reed. It looks like a recorder, but takes a whole lot more air to play, and at first it sounds like a duck call.

But after a few days with the chanter, the book, and the CD he started playing actual notes. And he kept at it. So we started to look around for someone to teach lessons. That's not quite as easy as with more common instruments, where you can sign up at the local music store. You have to do some looking around. At http://www.dudelsackkurse.de/ we found Herbert Bartmann in Oldenburg who offers a day-long beginners course on weekends, and read that 12 is the perfect age to start learning. Oldenburg is an hour drive each way, somewhat impractical for weekly lessons, but I brought him in for the day course.

We found that we were on the right track for getting started. Our son could play the scale and read notes by now, and after 8 hours with Mr. Bartmann was even more excited to learn more. He helped us make contact with a teacher in Hamburg, and we've had two lessons with him so far. It looks like our adventure will continue.

As a lay person listening in on the lessons, I've found the bagpipe to be more interesting than I imagined, particularly how one works within the limitations of the instrument. Its range is limited (9 notes, a little more than an octave), has a constant volume (no way to play quietly), and has a constant, uninterrupted tone. All the music is in the fingering, with grace notes and doublings surrounding the individual notes.

Our son's goal is to play a bagpipe solo at his school's Christmas concert… this year would be a little soon, but 2013 is certainly an attainable goal. We'll see then if he's still serious about the kilt.

End of the Century - 50% Loaded

2012-02-09T04:39:46+00:00

Happy Birthday to me!

It's Still Raining

2012-01-13T07:19:49+00:00

An inside joke in our house is that if I answer the phone and right after the "Hello" start discussing the weather, my wife knows my parents in Minnesota have called. Never mind the Caller ID and the fact I'm speaking English are also dead giveaways.

Of course in Minnesota the weather is a valid topic for conversation. It's extreme! They've got bitter cold, sweltering heat, massive thunderstorms, killer blizzards, and (insert your own adjective here) tornados! If you're not careful the weather can kill you! Drivers are advised to keep blankets and chocolate in their cars, since if they get stuck in the snow on a country road it could take a day or two or three before they can get out. My father was a highway engineer, responsible for keeping roads clear. He spent half his career watching the weather and planning accordingly. And in retirement, he hasn't quite gotten out of the habit. :-)

If Minnesota weather is worth a conversation, Hamburg weather is worth at best a grunt. Maritime climate. 130 days of rain per year. Moderate temperatures. Regular seasons. Sometimes wind. Hmmph.

(There are sometimes exceptions, of course, like in 2010 when we had snow and ice on the ground for 3 months: January, February and December. Those months stick out like sore thumbs on our business statements. It's not that it was so cold, but that the highway departments ran out of salt and couldn't clear the roads. They should have called my father for advice.)

For instance, the past 3 weeks we've had rain and 4°C/40°F, broken up only by days with wind and rain. The damp cold seeps through your clothing and sticks to your skin. If you're prone to depression due to seasonal affective disorder, this is not the place to be.

So when my parents call and tell me about the latest extreme phenomenon they are experiencing, they always ask politely how the weather is here. My answer is pretty much always the same. It's still raining.

Alarm Clocks

2012-01-11T06:35:56+00:00

We've gotten out of the habit of using alarm clocks. As a result, when I wake up I usually have no idea what the time is.

(No, this is not about how alarm clocks are obsolete in the 21st century and we use iPhones instead. iPhones as well as landline phones are banned from our bedroom. If you want to reach us in the middle of the night, you better bring the patience for us to hear the ringing from downstairs.)

It's not that we don't have an alarm clock in our bedroom. At last count we have four.

We have two matching digital alarms from that German coffee and gadget (and sports clothing and kitchen utensils and and and) shop Tchibo. On mine the buttons are very difficult so it goes unused. My wife's is face down on the headboard. The clock is so bright that even at the lowest setting it casts the entire room in an eerie yellow glow. It's like one of those pods from Matrix.

Number 3 is an iPod/iPhone speaker clock my wife gave me a couple of years ago. It somehow ended up on her side of the bed. It has way too many buttons and goes unused. Also, see above about iPhones being banned.

Number 4 is an analog radio-controlled clock from precision clock-maker Tchibo. It glows in the dark and shows the precise time. However, being analog, the alarm is not at all precise and can be set only at circa 10 minute intervals.

However, none of our collection of alarm clocks is particularly useful because from our bed we cannot see them. For one thing, our current bedroom furniture collection has no side tables but instead a headboard with wings, the surfaces of which are not visible from the pillows below. In addition, even if our eyes were equipped with periscope vision, we're both at the age that we cannot see much of anything without corrective lenses. For the purpose of telling time at night, any alarm clock for us is useless.

So if we awake in the middle of the night and want to know the time, we need to reach for respective clock (for my wife, her face-down eerie yellow-glowing Matrix digital, for me my little round radio-controlled analog) and hold it close enough to our face for us to read it. By this time, we're awake enough that we couldn't go back to sleep anyway.

I haven't yet even mentioned the most annoying alarm clock in the house… a TALKING clock from that electronic super-store Tchibo. I bought it on a whim, but found the voice so EVIL that I immediately intended to throw it out… but instead it ended up in our son's room. He sleeps in a high bed with no shelf for a clock, so he puts it in his bed against the sideboard. When he rolls over in the night, he rolls against the buttons and suddenly the clock starts speaking: "THE TIME IS… TWO… FORTY-SEVEN!!!" Our son sleeps through it, but the rest of us have to put up with random squawks of clock logic until one of us goes downstairs and extracts the talking clock from his bed.

That we then know exactly what the time is in the night is no solace.

Twelve

2011-12-26T23:02:15+00:00

John Gruber is wrong. I'm sure readers of Daring Fireball often thing he's wrong, especially when he talks about politics or the Yankees, but in this case he's wrong about fatherhood when he writes that when your son is eight years old that's as good as it gets.

That's wrong. It keeps getting better and better.

Our son is starting to become an adult and think for himself. Of course as parents we're the ones he challenges the most with his new ideas, and they're not always right, but they're his ideas. He has my sense of humor and laughs at my jokes. He is an environmentalist and has a deep sense of right and wrong, and he is persistent in convincing others that his right and wrong is right for everyone. He's so smart it's scary. Just the past 3 weeks he's aced 4 tests in various subjects at school, even in subjects that weren't his strongest. He's sometimes a bit of a pessimist. I'm hoping to convince him that it's easier to change the world when you think you can do it. But even now, I'm impressed and amazed by him and I can't wait for tomorrow to see what he will do and become next.

And he turns twelve today. Happy Birthday, Christopher!

Four Days of Christmas

2011-12-23T18:51:14+00:00

We've been busy this month, as usual. When you have to the stress of owning a business, then the holiday stress that comes in December is almost relaxing by comparison.

But now the the holidays are almost here, we have 4 days to celebrate!

Christmas Eve we'll to try avoid any last minute grocery shopping. We've have a simple dinner of Ragout Fin, then take Oma to the afternoon service at St. Michaelis in Hamburg, then return home for cookies, presents, and Glühwein.

Christmas Day is relatively quiet. No guests, just some fondue in the evening.

2nd Christmas Day we're cooking goose for all the in-laws! Big Petersen Christmas party at our house. Presents and music galore (back in October the kids recorded a couple of songs for Oma which my brother-in-law has professionally mixed).

3rd Christmas Day is Christopher's birthday. We're taking him out on the town for the new Sherlock Holmes movie, a last walk through the Hamburg Christmas market, and dinner at the roller-coaster restaurant Schwerelos & Zeitlos (Weightless and Timeless), where your meal rides on rails to your table. We'll see how that works.

Then it will be the 28th already, nearly time to get ready for New Year's Eve. Happy Holidays, no matter how many days you celebrate!

Unimaginable

2011-11-19T10:10:55+00:00

Lately I've gotten back to one of my favorite pleasures reading mystery novels. When we moved to Germany we shipped several boxes full of used paperbacks. These days with a Kindle, collecting novels is much easier. In case you're wondering, I've got Raymond Chandler complete ready to re-read, and lately re-read Blue City, an early Ross MacDonald. Right now I'm reading the delightful books by Colin Cotterill featuring Dr. Siri, the reluctant elderly coroner in post-war Laos (think CSI-Vientiane).

It's a love my wife and I both share (and judging form how he likes CSI-type shows, our son will as well). There's something about the combination of the extreme and banal, the murder and the police work, that a good author can use to make astute observations about society.

Right now in Germany a real-life criminal case is giving ample opportunity for astute observations. A band of 3 neo-Nazis went underground 13 years ago and committed at least 14 bank robberies, 10 murders and 2 nailbombings. The facts have come out not through brilliant police work, but purely by chance. The last bank robbery 2 weeks ago was botched and 2 of the gang members shots themselves rather than be captured. The third tried to burn their apartment but turned herself in a couple of days later. You can read about it at the Guardian or the NY Times, or follow the sensationalist coverage at Spiegel Online International.

This is particularly interesting because 1) the murders of foreign-born shopkeepers and the policewoman as well as the nailbombing in Cologne were high-profile crimes widely reported in the German media, and 2) German police and domestic intelligence have been particularly successful in infiltrating and stopping Islamist terror cells. Is German law enforcement blind to the right eye?

I'll let others answer that. I wouldn't necessarily call a conspiracy what could be sufficiently explained by incompetence. Noone is more paranoid of Germans being latent Nazis than Germans themselves. But if you read Bruce Schneier, you'll know he thinks security forces concentrate too much on acts that have already occurred. They couldn't imagine terrorists that don't take credit for their acts, so they didn't consider the possibility.

Hopefully the result of all the political calls for action will be that right-wing violence in Germany will finally be taken somewhat seriously.

Frozen Fog

2011-11-13T09:41:17+00:00

I was impressed by the view from our back window this morning. The lawn was frozen and the fog was thick and this leafless tree seemed to be spiting it all. It's November, and the damp cold should come as no surprise. The heat is on and we've started lighting the wood stove in the evening. The holidays will be here before we know it, and we're talking about next year like it's just around the corner instead of the distant future.

The fog is frozen and this tree is spiting it all.

Off The Rack

2011-10-02T17:57:38+00:00

Through soft living and not sticking to my gym schedule, I'm carrying 5 kilos more than 3 years ago and the suit I bought then is too tight around the belly. And the suit before that hangs like a tent. Why is fashion so unforgiving? But we have a gala event in Berlin to attend, and Christopher also needs the appropriate attire, so yesterday we were off to Hamburg to visit Policke.

I blogged about Policke 11 years ago when I got the suit before that. It hasn't changed much since then

Mama was convinced that I needed a new suit for her company Christmas party next weekend (her first formal appearance after maternity leave, although she officially starts on January 2). My main criteria in choosing a profession was to avoid wearing suits. I hate buying clothes, but its even worse to discuss or even argue about buying clothes, so I kept my mouth shut (well, nearly shut) and went along with Mama and Christopher to Hamburg early on Saturday.

We went to Policke, an old-fashioned mens clothier in Hamburg not chic downtown Hamburg, but the nitty, gritty inner-city neighborhood of St. Georg, located across from a Turkish bank and some porno shops, between a mosque^[*] and a Good Templars Club. The shop looks like it hasnt been remodeled since the 1920s, and maybe the staff hasnt changed since then either. Theres hardly room to move the tiny rooms are stuffed with suits.

Its impossible to browse. You are met at the door by the chief salesman, who measures your exact size by eye alone, and are sent to the appropriate room. I told the salesman there I need a dark colored suit for a Christmas party, he picked two out that both fit perfectly and met Mamas approval. I picked one, and we were out in 15 minutes, paying a least a third less than we would have downtown, and were home before the crowds arrived in the city.

This time the service was even quicker. The first suit tried on fit and was right, so I was done in 10 minutes, and I paid half of what I expected.. Same thing for Christopher: 10 minutes in and out, much cheaper than we expected.

Even more amazing before we shopped, Christopher insisted he didn't need a suit and didn't want to go to any gala in any case. Today he spent 45 minutes trying his new suit on and admiring the look.

^[*]At first I was afraid the mosque was the infamous Al-Quds mosque where the 9/11 plotters met, but that was around the corner on Steindamm, a couple of blocks away. The mosque on the same street as Policke is the Centrum Mosque, and tomorrow they happen to be holding an open house.

The End of the Century

2011-09-11T18:40:30+00:00

II debated whether to post anything for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I've pretty much written everything I have to say about it, either a day later in 2001, or 5 years ago, or even just 2 years ago.

I was an expat American in Hamburg in 2001, the city where the evil had spawned, and perhaps I was much closer to that evil than I really wanted to know. "Amerikaner, wir sind bei euch" (Americans, we stand by you) was the headline in the Hamburg paper the next day, and that was certainly comforting at the time. The only lasting consequence of that solidarity seems to be the military quagmire in Afghanistan.

As for these candles at the US Consulate in Hamburg, I don't think you can even get that close to consulate anymore. The street is closed, last time I was there we had to go past guards in tanks with machine guns to get in. Maybe that's all I need to say about how the world is different today.

All in all I'd just rather forget that day.

28 years ago

2011-09-06T16:46:00+00:00

We had the cheapest wedding meal ever! Details at Young, Dumb and Excited, they haven't changed much since then.

Driving the E-Smart

2011-09-01T04:52:57+00:00

We've had our E-Smart (officially Smart Fortwo Electric Drive Cabriolet) for two months now, long enough to have had some experience with it. In short, we like it even more than we thought we would.

You can't just go out an buy one, however. It's not available for general sale. We're participating in a cooperation between Daimler and McDonald's Deutschland that lets us participate in a test of using E-Smarts in corporate fleets. We lease and insure direct from Daimler, and I won't mention the price since I'm not sure it's representative of any market price. It's safe to say it's our most expensive company car. (Update: The E-Smart FAQ at www.smart.de mentions a leasing rate of 700 per month, plus VAT.)

The basic statistics: it has a range of 120 km on a full charge and a top speed of 100 km/h. It takes 8 hours to charge a completely empty battery at a standard 220V outlet, or 90 minutes at a high-voltage charging station. The proponents of electric mobility say these limitations are not limitations at all, that 99% of daily driving can be done without having to charge away from home. We've found that to be true, and our battery has never gone below 50%. When planning your trips, though, you're always keeping those limitations in mind, and we make sure it's always charged up. It's also a two-seater, so family trips are out.

We've found the E-Smart to be perfect for those short trips where gas and diesel are particularly inefficient. There's no warm-up time, the E-Smart is always ready to go. We live in the country, our grocery store is 3 km away, the school bus stop 4 km, Buchholz where we do most shopping 5 km. We can make those trips without feeling guilty at all.

As for driving, it sounds and feels like riding an elevator or driving a bumper car. It has a one-speed transmission, so it never shifts gears, you just step on the accelerator and it goes. It will never win any drag races pulling from a stop light. It has air conditioning and a good (but not great) sound system that plays MP3s. And we can put the top down, though with this year's German non-summer we've done that exactly once.

As for the operating costs, we've got a mini power-use counter on our outside outlet, so we know that we've driven about 2500 km on about 350 kWh. However, that does not count charges at the loading station in Rade (it's still in test and we aren't paying there yet). We pay about 23 cents per kWh for our eco-power at home, so that works out to about 3.25 per 100 km, which I figure is about half of what gas or diesel would cost. So it's not only fun and ecological, it's inexpensive too*. (*Not considering the purchase price.)

Are electric cars the wave of the future? I don't know. The car itself has no emissions, but power generating plant may be nuclear or coal, so you're just moving the pollution to where you can't see it. The high purchase prices make them uneconomical for most people right now. And I'm not sure how electric mobility fits in an energy policy that stresses conservation (particularly in Germany, which is giving up nuclear power). The future may be in hybrids, or a technology not involving a heavy battery. But it's worth trying out and thinking about, and our decorated E-Smart is turning heads.

Sanity Time

2011-08-18T03:39:35+00:00

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It's been over five weeks since my last post

Our summer "vacation" was a busy as we suspected it would be. The restaurant in Rade, the truck stop store without a truck stop, is as busy as we hoped it would be. The self-serve "Easy Order" kiosks are in but are not being frequented that much yet (around 3% of guests). I suspect most people walk by not knowing what they are. Our first store in Dibbersen has been holding its own, down just a bit from last year despite having the brand new store just a few km away.

However it was our store in Harburg that gave us the nicest surprise. A couple of weeks ago we found our neighboring Burger King had subtly changed.

It had become a non-Burger King. Apparently BK had cancelled their franchise. The restaurant is still open as a generic burger joint, but it doesn't look open and we're getting a surprise plus. Now we just need to get staffed to match.

Meanwhile we had sent our son to my parents in Minnesota for 3 weeks, after the success of his Easter voyage. He arrived just at the peak of the heat wave (110°F), but it was cooler at the lake and he pretty much caught all the sunfish he could get (final count over 60). I flew over for the last few days of his visit to catch up with my folks and bring him home. It was nice to get a couple of days of sanity time.

Today school starts, our son is in the 6th grade, and our schedule gets back to "normal", whatever normal turns out to be this fall.

Open

2011-07-11T06:23:01+00:00

We've been open in Rade for over a week, and the good news is that sales are pretty much what we expected and that most stuff works. However it's been a hectic two weeks, full of major and minor disasters.

Construction chaos: Standard construction time is 12 weeks, and 10 weeks would be extremely fast. We were built in 9 weeks, and actually less than that considering the holidays in May and June. Coordination among sub-contractors is always difficult, and was complicated by the accelerated schedule. Everyone seemed to be constantly waiting on somebody else.

Telecommunications: The biggest disaster, and still not solved. The line was applied for in April, but it took over 8 weeks for our telephone and DSL providers (one is magenta, the other is red) to figure out 1) exactly where our site was located, 2) that we'd have a different area code than our postal address, and 3) DSL would not be available at the site until May 2012. It's perhaps a sad fact of modern times, but we can't sell hamburgers without a working data connection... specifically, to program and maintain our POS system. The situation is complicated by the fact that magenta and red don't talk directly to one another and always blame each other for whatever problems occur. The current status is that we'll get super-slow 300 Kbit DSL this week, in the meantime they cobbled a connection first with UMTS (3G cellular) and then over the landline.

POS System: As a result of the telecom woes, we didn't have a base POS system in place until 10 hours before opening with no time to test. The shaky data connection meant our help desk couldn't log in to us to fix the inevitable problems. The system crashed hard on close the first two nights. Our McCafé registers weren't properly connected to the system, and our Day 1 sales data for McCafé are gone. The operating system for the POS is brand new and pretty much undocumented. Our knowledge of the previous system is useless for the new system, so we were dependent on the help desk for setting things up for our requirements. Good thing for us the Easy Order kiosks did not arrive in time, that would have been just an added complication. Things pretty much work now, and we expect the kiosks by the end of the month.

Freezer: On Wednesday evening, Day 6 after opening, the refrigeration technician finished the final adjustments to our walk-in freezer and declared the installation for complete. The next morning the temperature inside was +5°C. Our entire frozen stock worth over 14000 had to be destroyed. Our logistics partner brought us a freezer truck to store our new stock so we could get back in business right away. The original installers were never able to get the freezer up and running. On Saturday a new firm was brought in, and the found and fixed the problem within minutes. The installer had literally gotten the wires crossed. The freezer has been at a stable -22°C for 48 hours, and we'll move our stock back inside today. Legally, the unit is under guarantee, and our costs will be covered by the general contractor.

All in all, the disasters were all things outside our responsibility and control. Everything that we did and hired ourselves, our people, the lobby and patio design, the landscaping, the PR and local marketing, that has all been nearly perfect.

T Minus 7 Days

2011-06-23T18:30:58+00:00

The front door already looks pretty good.

The lobby needs a little work, though.

And this is going to be our McCafé?

I'll spare you the pictures from the kitchen. To us it looks like total chaos. But the construction experts tell us everything looks good for a week before opening. We're crossing our fingers until Monday, when we officially take over the site.

Let's take a look outside. We have a nice Playland for the kids to crawl through. Just yesterday it was still packed on pallets on a truck.

And it's always good to have asphalt in the Drive-Thru lane before the cars come.

But it seems the general contractor has some understanding for our logo. That's a very good sign!

But I almost forgot... the best thing is, our electric drive Smart has arrived. It will look better once we paste a bunch of Golden Arches on it! But we'll show it off on Sunday at our local Stadtlauf (city run).

Moving Right Along

2011-06-14T19:12:06+00:00

Things are starting to get serious at the construction site. These pictures are already a few days old.

Here's our opening day supervisor checking out the grand opening signs.

From the Autobahn it's pretty easy to tell what's happening here.

Next week we start moving in kitchen equipment and fixtures, and opening is set for the 30th.

Pfingstbaumpflanzen (Pentecost trees)

2011-06-13T07:49:13+00:00

I've mentioned the Pentecost traditions in our village in previous years. This year there seems to be a revitalized interest in village activities, for example the Dorffest was newly organized and was a huge success with 10x the turnout of previous years. Last week a brochure (Pfingstbaumfplanzen as PDF) was distributed to all houses explaining the tradition of planting Pentecost trees, which in our area is unique to our village. Here is my attempt at a translation.

Dear Villagers,

Since Pentecost is almost here, we would like to explain to you, the new residents of the village, the custom of planting Pentecost trees (Pfingstbaumpflanzen) and to you, the old residents, to remind you of the history.

The custom of planting Pentecost trees descends from an old tradition, in which the young men of the village, starting in the year in which they are confirmed, can participate.

They went from house to house and at the front doors of those families with unmarried daughters they placed a freshly cut young birch tree and sang traditional songs in order to introduce themselves.

Today, in the time of single exchanges, personal ads and the Internet, the custom has changed.

Today, on Pentecost Saturday the bachelors of Lüllau between ages 14 as 30 go from house to house through the village and place freshly cut young birch trees at the houses and sing traditional songs. After the song the eldest recites a saying. Then the residents of the house treat the young men to a glass of schnaps or a sum of money.

Until Saturday,
Your Pfingsbaumfplanzer

On Sunday, the boys and girls come in separate groups as the Pfingstvoss-Singers. They also sing songs and get in return a sum of money or candy.

These traditions are also documented in the Lüllau Chronicle.

We had schnaps and Mini-Dickmann candy ready for the men on Saturday, but they must have gotten behind schedule. We went to bed at 11 pm without having seen them, but the next morning the freshly cut birch was at our door.

Interior Shots

2011-05-30T04:43:13+00:00

We had a chance to visit the new restaurant on Sunday. There's now security watching over the site, but he was nice enough to let us in for some pictures. Here's the front counter and kitchen area.

Here's the lobby. The pipes coming out of the floor will be McCafé.

Looking towards the front door. Behind the walls to the left will be the restrooms and recycling room.

And finally a couple of ceiling shots with lots of air ducts.

We open in 4-1/2 weeks.

Status Report Rade

2011-05-24T05:20:23+00:00

The new restaurant in Rade is set to open in 5 weeks and 2 days. Here's the inviting front entrance area.

We have a lovely, sunny patio with 70 seats for your dining pleasure.

From the patio you can enjoy this fascinating view of the LogPark and the Autobahn A1.

Should you prefer, you can always order from our convenient drive-thru.

We Have Walls

2011-05-17T13:48:07+00:00

Here's a couple of quick drive-by shots of the new restaurant. You can see just how close to the Autobahn and how visible we are going to be.

The Plan Doesn't Come Together

2011-05-04T14:07:39+00:00

Over Easter vacation our son flew to the US for the first time alone to visit his grandparents. It was only for a week, we drove him to Amsterdam (5 hours each way) so he'd be able to fly non-stop and not sit in a strange airport by himself. Turned out he loved it, one week was way too short, and he'd fly by himself again anytime. His grandparents are willing to host him anytime (of course).

Since we have big plans for the summer, we won't be able to take a family vacation, so we're thinking that maybe he can fly back to the States for a couple weeks before school starts, and so that his grandparents (my parents) won't forget what their son (me) looks like, I could fly in for a few days to pick him up. So I started looking at Kayak for flight prices, and suffered a sudden attack of sticker shock. Four-figure sticker shock.

Between high fuel prices, high season, and new German departure taxes, flights from Hamburg to Minneapolis in July and August start at over 1000. Flights from any other German city are the same, and from Amsterdam is even more expensive. One exception was Icelandic, which has occasional flights from Hamburg this summer. They had a deal on some sites for 830, if you will willing to handle an 8 hour layover in Keflavik (which is I guess why the Icelandic site itself doesn't list it, and is not appropriate for an unaccompanied minor).

Trying to creative, I start looking at airports in neighboring countries, and see that flights from Copenhagen to Minneapolis start from the low 800s. Copenhagen is just 300km away, train there costs 30, a commuter flight about 100 round trip. Could that work?

The devil is in the details. The flights are in the morning or early afternoon. The cheap commuter flights are in the evening. The train takes 5 hours (there's a body of water in the way, so the train crosses the Fehmarn Belt by ferry), and with the airport connection would not make it in time for check-in. Taking an early commuter flight would eat up almost all the savings while making the trip more complicated (an extra stop with re-check-in).

We might just have to bite the bullet and pay the four figures.

Groundbreak

2011-04-30T07:53:50+00:00

We've been keeping a secret for the past several months, and it can now finally be revealed.

We're pleased to announce that construction has begun for our 4th McDonald's restaurant! It will be located on the Autobahn A1 at Rade, the first exit from Hamburg heading towards Bremen. We expect to open at the end of June.

The restaurant with McCafé will be part of an Autohof, a truck stop and gas station, and our logo will appear on official Autobahn signage leading to the Autohof. Over 70,000 cars per day pass Rade on the Autobahn. It also fills a hole in the McDonald's map. From the west, the nearest restaurant is at Bockel, 44 km away. To the east, our restaurant at Dibbersen is less than 8 km away, but with the Autobahn crossing "Buchholzer Dreieck" between the two stores, they have completely different traffic patterns. Traffic from the Elbtunnel heading south drive past Rade, but not Dibbersen.

We'll be part of the LogPark Hamburg, a logistics center currently under construction on both sides of the Autobahn. We'll be located alongside the eastbound lane before the exit, so we'll be impossible to miss. We won't need an overly large sign to be visible from 2 km away.

The current standard building type in Germany features a green exterior with wood trim and all the latest energy-saving innovations. We've chosen a colorful "LIM Fresh" interior for an expected 130 seats inside and 70 seats outside. Among the extras we've chosen are touch-screen "Easy Order" kiosks to enable guests to enter and pay for their orders before coming to the counter.

A special innovation will the charging station for electric vehicles, only the 5th of its kind at German McDonald's. You'll be able to charge your battery with eco-power while enjoying your meal. We'll be adding an electric car to our company fleet. With a top speed of 100 kmh and a range of 130 km, it should be perfect for driving between our 4 restaurants.

We've been discussing the site with McDonald's for over a year, and we're very happy that we'll be open for the entire school vacation season this summer. The Autohof won't be completed until this fall, so things will be a bit dusty for the first few months. Right now we have the first big challenge: finding 70 new employees in a booming economy to be set to open in 10 weeks. Wish us luck!

Road Construction

2011-04-21T04:35:03+00:00

Normally our village is pretty quiet. We only have 4 streets, none of which are paved, a couple dozen houses, and no shops at all (no bakery, no post office, no grocer, no gas station) other than a bio farmer who sells asparagus in the spring and Christmas trees in December. This is the usual layout...

However, for the past six weeks the county roads going through our village have been under construction, and it looks more like this:

The dark red is completely closed. They're building a rain drainage pond to the right and big drainage pipes under the road.

The intersection of the county roads is being turned into a traffic circle. One lane is available through the crossing regulation, only one direction can drive through at a time, regulated by traffic lights (dots).

Meanwhile a bicycle path is being built on the county road starting in our village and heading off several km to the north. For us that means the sidewalk is being widened and the street narrowed.

The end effect is that the traffic that normally turns south at the crossing redirects itself onto our cobblestone streets. It's not a marked detour, but people take it anyway, ignoring the no-trucks sign and the 30 kmh speed limit. (The road marked Sand is just a tractor path and leads nowhere unless you're an asparagus picker.) We can hear traffic past our house starting at 6am, just after the early-morning birds stop chirping.

The construction should be done in early June, and until then we won't be needing our alarm clocks.

Update: The same day this was posted, the circle was opened to traffic in all directions. No more unofficial detours on our street! Hooray!

Quiet Week

2011-04-14T18:35:54+00:00

It's going to be a quiet week for us next week, the week before Easter. Not that we don't have enough to do, we have plenty of that. But our son is going to be away the entire week. He's flying by himself, for the first time, to Minnesota to visit his grandparents.

We noticed during our visit last summer that he was doing very well communicating in English, and, of course, as for any child his grandparents are the greatest. So we decided that this spring would be the right time for the first big trip alone.

We're sure the airline will take good care of unaccompanied minors (especially for the price!), but to minimize the risk of mistakes we are driving him to Amsterdam so he can fly non-stop to Minnesota, and will drive there again in a week to pick him up. Annoyingly, the direct flight from Amsterdam costs more than it would have to fly one-stop (in Amsterdam) from Hamburg.

We're all three feeling mostly excited but a just little bit scared. It's good that we we planned this trip for him alone, since the way our business looks we won't be able to get away for a family trip this year.

Our son will return home on Easter Saturday, so he can be at our local Easter fire with his Youth Fire Dept. comrades. He does, after all, have to keep his obligations.

Accidental Shots

2011-04-10T05:51:03+00:00

We had sponsor tickets for yesterday's HSV match against Dortmund (we applied for the tickets last summer, so I obviously knew in advance that Dortmund would do well this year). I couldn't connect to Twitter in the stadium, so you'll have to take our word for it that we were there.

The sun was shining, the Dortmund fans were plentiful and in a good mood (Christopher thought it was funny that they were singing children's songs with, um, slightly altered lyrics), and in the end noone lost, so a good time was had by all.

I brought along our new camera, a Canon PowerShot SX130 IS, to see how the zoom worked. Not bad for a 150 general purpose camera, but all you can do is point at a spot, hope for the action to get there, and get an accidental shot. The picture of Frank Rost cleaning the toilet paper out of his goal before kickoff is good, though.

Green Card

2011-03-30T19:13:08+00:00

My wife had incredibly bad luck with her green card.

You may recall that she arrived in the US with a fiancée visa which, once the fiancée bit is consummated, so to speak, entitles one to permanent residence and a green card. The physical card was the problem. The INS managed to misspell her name on the card three times before finally getting it right, several months later.

Easy come, easy go. A couple of weeks after we moved to Germany in 1990, we took a day trip to Berlin to see what all the fuss was about. We got completely lost in the Friedrichstraße S-Bahn station (where the passport control for Westerners used to be, the maze of hallways were still there but absolutely no signs), and once we got out, her purse was stolen. Passport, ID, and green card, all gone.

We reported everything stolen, but we never had the green card replaced, since she was no longer a resident of the US, much less a permanent resident. We figured that was a detail we could take care of when we moved back the the States. As it turned out, that hasn’t happened yet. Cest la vie

And the winner is... Latin

2011-03-28T07:29:15+00:00

For those following along with the "which language will Christopher learn in the 6th grade" contest, we have a winner. A full week before the deadline, he declared his decision for Latin, and we turned in the form to the school today.

Our preference was for French, and we even tried using to some reverse psychology (pointing out the advantages of Latin and hoping he'd argue with us), but that backfired. The main thing is that he made a decision and is happy with it.

Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions and played along.

Lingua franca

2011-03-23T12:20:25+00:00

In the Gymnasium schools in our state, students start learning a second foreign language (after English) in grade 6. The schools we looked at all offered a choice from Latin, French and Spanish. The public schools all required a choice upon enrollment in the 5th grade, over a year before the courses would actually begin.

In Christopher's private school, they don't need to choose until April 1 of their 5th grade year. After winter break, the students had a chance to try out all 3 languages for a couple of days to help them make their decision.

The result for Christopher is... he wants to learn all 3, Latin, French and Spanish, and preferably Russian as well, but that's not a choice. :-) So here we are one week before deadline, and we haven't made a decision yet.

Spanish will be offered as a 3rd language starting in 10th grade, so he can start that later. So now he's trying to decide between French and Latin, and he can't make up his mind. We'd prefer that he take a language that's spoken rather than most written, given his stutter, but he's not willing to let us decide for him.

I took a quick poll on Twitter the other night. The approximate counts were 8 for French, 5 for Latin (although a couple of votes seemed facetious), 2 for Spanish. One joke vote for German was not accepted. We'll let you know how it turns out.

Music Snob

2011-02-27T07:41:48+00:00

The past several weeks our son has been obsessed with classical music. I suspect it has something to do with the music instruction at his new school.

It doesn't come from us. Our consumption of classical music is close to zero. My wife currently has Rihanna and Katy Perry on heavy rotation in her car. Should you ever have the opportunity to drive her car, it is highly recommended to turn the music volume down before touching the ignition, if you value your sense of hearing.

He started taking keyboard classes last fall, and with some Christmas money we got him a basic Yamaha keyboard. It has some canned classical pieces in memory, Für Elisa, Wilhelm Tell, and stuff like that. He'd listen to them and try to play along. I finally got him a CD with some real recordings ("I don't like classic but I like this") so we don't have to listen to the tinny keyboard playback anymore.

Then he came home telling us about Mozart and opera and The Magic Flute and that he'd really like to see it sometime. It just so happened that a traveling ensemble presented The Magic Flute at our local theatre this month, and since then we have the CD and have to listen to opera every morning for breakfast.

Then this week his school presented an evening with two concert pianists playing Haydn which we had to attend (without Mama, for her that was too much). And now when we hear a good song on the radio, and we tell him "That's a song from when we were young, that's an oldie", he answers, "Not as old as my music!".

Like I said, it didn't come from us. Maybe he was born this way.

Seven Squared

2011-02-09T13:17:59+00:00

Time to turn the calendar once again! And since The Economist recently declared that life begins at 46, things can only keep getting better, right?

Save the World

2011-02-05T04:21:17+00:00

Thirty years ago, I entered college with a mission: I was going to Save the World! I was fresh from a summer in northeastern Brazil as an AFS student and had experienced what the difference between rich and poor really is. Coming from the richest and most powerful country on earth, I was going to have the knowledge and the power to do good, to facilitate change, to make the world a better place. I was going to study International Relations! I was going to learn Diplomacy!

When it came to the nitty gritty content, there were a lot of paradoxical truths to be learned. Like that Mutual Assured Destruction was a good thing and that nuclear weapons made the world a safer place. And that politics is a zero-sum game, so that preventing your opponent from gaining something was just as good as winning. And that a big problem in developing countries are the elite classes in those countries themselves, who either run the country corruptly or go abroad to study and never come back. And another big problem are agricultural subsidies in rich countries, which distort the entire world market for farm commodities and make it impossible for poor countries to feed themselves.

It's all quite depressing, really. I decided that the studying the relationship between money and power was more interesting and satisfying that saving the world, and switched majors from International Relations to Economics.

I mention all this now because even then the US was supporting the dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt to the tune of billions of dollars per year, and in the twisted logic of Diplomacy it made perfect sense then as it did until about two weeks ago. And the people running US foreign policy today are people my age who 30 years ago wanted to save the world. Maybe they've switched to other goals. Or maybe they know that in the long run, it's a better policy to foster democracy than to prop up dictators with billions of dollars, but they just don't how to do it.

On the other hand, in Economics we say that in the long run, we're all dead. When comparing two long runs, we don't know which one will come first. It's all quite depressing, really.

No, not everything is depressing... it's quite heartening to see millions of Egyptians demonstrating for democracy. I hope they are not disappointed, and that they don't have to wait for the long run for their freedom

Stranded!

2011-01-16T21:33:40+00:00

Last Tuesday we accepted delivery for the Volkswagen Sharan that we ordered 6 months ago (with a lot of extras but without the automatic doors like in the cute commercial). It will be my company car for the next three years. Our family isn't really big enough for a mini-van, but there are times we need the space, either for business or for pleasure. I'd love to show it to you, but right now all I have is this fuzzy smartphone photo...

...because the day after we picked up the car, with 325 km on the odometer, it had to be towed from the Autobahn to the shop!

I was on my way to Lüneburg to pick up our son from school for an appointment, enjoying the music from the very loud speakers, when at 180 km/h the (manual) transmission suddenly popped out of gear and wouldn't go back in. All I could do was coast to the side of the road and call for help, and arrange for an alternate pick-up for our son. My wife was out of town, so she couldn't step in (but she did contact her brother to pick up our son from the bus, and I was able to reach the school to tell him to take the bus instead of waiting for me).

The next day I was told that the transmission was blocked for some unexplained reason and will be completely replaced. The car will probably be ready on Tuesday.

I must say that VW Service performed as well as I could expect. Within 30 minutes I was being towed to the nearest VW dealer, and 1 hour later I was on my way home with a free loaner car.

We've leased all our cars from Volkswagen since starting our business, even for the franchisee herself, and we have a good relationship with our local VW dealer. We're sure this is a one-off problem, and even if not we'll be able to resolve it to our satisfaction. But I have to admit I'll be a bit hesitant the first time I bring the Sharan to full speed when we have it back.

Back in Black

2011-01-12T21:27:43+00:00

One of the several good effects of our son's new school is that he has developed an enthusiasm for music. We didn't take him to any special music classes earlier (it's something we didn't think of, since neither of us did it as kids, maybe that was a missed opportunity), but with his very first music class at the new school, he decided he it was time to learn an instrument. One of his music teachers offers weekly after-school keyboard lessons, and our son was the first to sign up.

(After school means he misses the bus home and we have to pick him up. Remember the school is a 45 minute drive from our home. Calculate how much fuel we burn to foster his interest in music. When I complain about my Friday taxi-driving schedule, this is what I mean.)

After a couple of months of lessons, he outgrew the cheapy keyboard from the supermarket, so armed with some birthday money from Grandma we invested in a Yamaha E223 keyboard... still low-end, but much better than what we had.

And while we were at the music store (Musik Markt Hamburg, by the way), I decided to scratch an itch I've had for a while. I haven't done anything with music for 30 years, since playing bass clarinet in the high school band. I really enjoyed it then, and seeing how our son is having so much fun with it, I thought maybe I could get back into it...

So I bought a bass guitar and an amp. Here we are showing of our new instruments.

My sister-in-law's response: is there anything black left on the shelves? (Yes, I'm color-blind, and I am invariably attracted to black. It's the only color I'm sure I see correctly. And if it were red it would be a midlife crisis.)

The bass is a Yamaha RBX170, a decent and versatile beginners' bass, with a Marshall MBB15 amp, which is enough to practice in the basement. My knowledge of bass is starting from zero, and so far I've learned the strings are E-A-D-G and that I'll have to hang weights on my left-hand fingers to get them to stretch enough to cover four frets. I have a couple of books, and can still read music, so we'll see how far I can get by myself.

Meanwhile our son is trying to follow along to Beethoven (Ode to Joy and Für Elise), listens to The Four Seasons, and insisted we get tickets to a tour of The Magic Flute when it comes to Buchholz next month.

And he says he's ready to start a second instrument. The violin.

Extremism in Defense of Liberty

2011-01-10T21:41:15+00:00

Yesterday we attended the New Year's Reception given by the mayor of Buchholz. It was a typical political meet-and-greet event, with all the usual suspects in attendance: the county commissioner (Landrat), 2 members of the Bundestag, 1 member of the Landestag (Lower Saxony Parliament). There was shake-hands with the mayor, a glass Sekt, live music on stage, and a couple of optimistic speeches. Other than the Amtskette the mayor was wearing, it could have been a typical American political event.

It could have been a political event like the meet-and-greet in Tucson where Representative Giffords was shot and six people were killed by a lone gunman.

There is much speculation that the poisoned polarization of American politics may have contributed to the atmosphere that makes such a shooting possible. I think it is unfair to solely blame a certain ex-governor of Alaska for this poisoned climate. After all, the left was all too happy to demonize the G. W. Bush administration (although, demonization has been ratcheted up a couple of notches since the last election).

In Germany I have come to appreciate the multi-party parliamentary political system that values compromise over rhetoric. You cannot demonize your opponent, since your opponent today might be your coalition partner tomorrow. German parties debate the details, but not the basics, of democracy. Right now I have the feeling the American parties do not agree on the basics. And if you can't live with each other, what's left to live for?

We do not now (and may never) understand the motivation of the madman from Tucson. But Arizona (as a state of immigrants from both inside and outside the US) is a Geiger counter for American politics. "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice", said Barry Goldwater, presidential candidate from Arizona. Right now I'm hoping for some extremism in defense of moderatism.

Brussels Sprouts with BACON

2011-01-06T20:30:01+00:00

OK, it's not really bacon, just low-fat diced ham, but this recipe from our My Line fitness program has become our favorite way to eat Brussels sprouts, even as a main dish! The original recipe is metric, the American equivalents are approximate.

500 g (1 lb) Brussels sprouts
1 onion, chopped
1 Tsp olive oil
50 g (2 oz) diced ham (3% fat)
dash soy or Maggi sauce
75 ml (1/3 cup) broth
50 ml (1/4 cup) dry white wine
a pinch grated nutmeg
1-1/2 Tsp low-fat cooking cream
1 stem fresh marjoram, chopped

Wash Brussels sprouts, steam for 7 minutes. Heat olive oil in a frying pan, lightly brown the diced ham, add onions and fry until translucent. Stir in Brussels sprouts. Add broth and white wine, cover, and cook 5 minutes. Stir in soy sauce, nutmeg and cooking cream, sprinkle with fresh marjoram, and serve immediately.

Grocery Shopping

2011-01-05T04:17:49+00:00

With my wife and I both having busy and hectic schedules (well, hers is more hectic, mine is mostly pushing paper), coordinating grocery shopping is a constant challenge.

We have a completely low-tech method of compiling a grocery list: a piece of paper tacked to the side of the refrigerator where we note the staples we're running low on (although "running low" is relative, we could have 1-1/2 cartons of eggs in the house, and my wife will still add eggs to the list). When writing on paper on a sideways wall, there's a 10% chance of any particular item being illegible, just to add some randomness to the process.

Another source of randomness is whether one has remembered to bring the list to the store. This is quite logical; when leaving for work, one is thinking about the things one wants to do at work, not about the grocery list. When one is done at work, one thinks "I could buy groceries on the way home", but one doesn't have the list, and one has to wing it.

Now at this point some smarty-pants is going to tell us to use a mobile app to create a synced shopping list. But what would that mean? That means our shopping list would depend on the internet! What if the internet goes down? We wouldn't be able to go shopping, and we'd starve!

Sometimes I will go medium-tech and take a picture of the list with my cell phone. But this can lead to yet another complication: double shopping, since if I take a picture of the list, the list is still there for the next person. We then both spontaneously come up with of idea of going shopping at the same time without telling one another and we end up with 45 eggs in the house.

But once in a great while the system works. I remember to bring the list, everything is legible, everything is in stock at the store, and I can cross everything off the list. But invariably that evening we'll find we can't cook because something is missing and my wife will ask me incredulously, "How can you only buy what's on the list?"

Figuring out how to guess what should be on the list but isn't is an exercise left to the reader.

Christmas Card

2010-12-24T09:30:20+00:00

As usual, I prepared our Christmas greetings for our friends and relatives in the US at CardStore, which lets us upload pictures and prepare a text and saves us the trouble of filling out envelopes and paying international postage. Also as usual, PapaScott readers get the inside scoop first...

2010 is ending for us the same way it began... with snow! With airports closed, trains running late, and highways clogged throughout Europe, we're happy to be staying put for the holidays this year.

We ended up staying put in April as well (thanks to Icelandic volcanic ash) when we planned to fly to Florida for the McDonald's International Convention. Next one is in 2012. We were able to make it to Minnesota in July to see Grandma and Grandpa, with side trips to Arizona and San Francisco. Our fall meeting was in Greece, but we had no time for sightseeing.

In August we finally celebrated our 25th anniversary (2 years late) with a catered barbecue. We were happy to have Grandma and my cousin here for the festivities.

Our son turns 11 this month and is in the 5th grade. In Germany that means he has graduated to Gymnasium (middle school). To take advantage of smaller classes and more individual attention, he's at a private school that's a 45 minute bus ride away. This fall he's already read the entire Harry Potter series in German and is now half-way through in English. He's also developing an interest in music that we'll have to make sure we nurture.

Our three restaurants are doing fine (at least when it doesn't snow) and keep us both busy. If things go as planned we'll open a new restaurant on the Autobahn this summer.

Our present to ourselves this year was a modern wood stove for our living room. It has glass on 3 sides so we can always see the flames (if we keep the glass clean). Luckily we ordered a cord of firewood before the snow started, so we're ready for a cold winter!

Starting Over

2010-12-08T17:59:05+00:00

Five years ago I wrote this:

It was 25 years ago ~~Wednesday~~ Thursday that John Lennon was killed. Has it really been that long? It's an event (like the Challenger explosion) that I remember vividly and that changed how I felt about myself and the world. I had just started college, I was working at the student radio station at the U of M. Ihad the Sunday morning shift, so I was on the air for the world wide minute of radio silence 6 days after his death. (via curry.com)

Good thing my blog has a search function, otherwise I might have written pretty much the same thing today, except now it's been 30 years. And now I can link to the broadcast where I first heard the news, from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football, Miami vs New England, December 8, 1980. "It's just a football game."

BTW: NDRinfo is broadcasting a John-Lennon-Nacht tonight at midnight.

Got Your Back

2010-11-15T21:20:32+00:00

It was this time about 4 years ago (November 2006) that I started feeling strange pains in my back. Actually, they were in my legs and butt, and I was too dumb to realize they were really coming from my back. And I was too dumber to go to a proper orthopedist until 2 months later, who diagnosed a pinched nerve in my lower back, and it took another 2 months of shots and therapy to actually relieve the pain.

At that time, as a kind of "it can't do any harm and could do some good" measure I signed up for a back therapy course at our local fitness center Sportland in Buchholz, with a group mostly 20+ years my senior. Part of the course was a back-strength check from Dr. Wolff, and my values were at first well in the red. Eight weeks later I had barely made it into the yellow area, so I had some work ahead of me.

Of course I lapsed in my training, so exactly one year after my first episode I suffered a relapse of my back pain, which unfortunately coincided with two trans-Atlantic flights. Eight hours of sitting in a plane with a pinched nerve can only be a special level of hell never imagined by Dante.

I mention all this now only because for the past year I've been more or less consistent with my training (mostly less), and just re-took the Dr. Wolff back-strength test. My strength values were all green. My triceps are somewhat weak, and my left side is stronger than my right, but the absolute values are OK. And I haven't felt any symptoms of back pain in nearly 3 years. Having gone through that hell, I'm happy not to have to deal with it again.

My weight isn't yet optimal, and that plays a big factor as well. But it's gotten better. I weighed 106 kg when my back problems began, and I'm at 93 kg now. I'm still above my ideal BMI, but I'm much better than I was.

Back pain is one of the major health problems in middle age. I've been able to beat it by reducing my weight and increasing my back strength. That strategy could work for others as well.

I Live Overseas... And I Vote

2010-11-01T15:58:02+00:00

Tomorrow are the mid-term elections in the US, in case you haven't heard. My vote is already in and counted. If you don't know how to vote from overseas, the Overseas Vote Foundation can help you get started. You might still have a chance to get in your vote for tomorrow, or at the very least, be set to go for the next election. The procedure is different from state to state, but they can help you out.

We didn't know anything then

2010-10-25T18:57:14+00:00

The reports this past the weekend of the WikiLeaks documents showing how the US ignored torture in Iraq made me sad. Not so much that that it came as a surprise, but rather that it came as no surprise. And it made me think of what I wrote about the Iraq war before it began...

Im no great fan of George W. Bush, and my own opinion on Iraq is ambivalent. I cant think of a good reason to use force against Iraq, but then again, I cant think of a good reason not to, either. The attack on Iraq is inevitable

My ambivalence back then was the hope that, despite my doubts that sending in troops can solve any problem, that deposing Saddam Hussein was a noble cause, that we were the good guys, that it was 1938 all over again and this time we would stop Hitler before he annexed the Sudetenland.

In the process, however, we've lost the moral high ground. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, waterboarding, "targeted killings" carried out by drones... and the war we started caused over 100,000 Iraqi deaths. It's not 1938, and if you have to impose democracy on a country then just maybe it's not democracy anymore.

Before the war I was ambivalent. What we didn't know then is that we didn't know anything then.

Blue skies, Minneapolis skyline, Jim Thome

2010-09-22T04:51:59+00:00

Aaron Gleeman pointed to the current cover of Sports Illustrated featuring Target Field. Click for full size. Here's hoping it looks this good in October. Be a shame if it snowed!

Thus Spake The Poodle

2010-09-19T08:31:17+00:00

I promised to explain the poodle.

Last weekend the 5th annual Whiney Expat Blogger Meet-Up was held in Hamburg. Tradition holds that once a date and location are decided (by democratic vote in a process somewhat similar in length and complexity to choosing a US presidential candidate), the local bloggers, in this case Ian, No Apathy Allowed, Transkitten and I, plan the weekend. Over the years a successful formula for the weekend has evolved: a side-trip on Friday, dinner Friday evening, a walking tour Saturday morning followed by lunch, disco nap in the afternoon, dinner and (gay) bar hopping Saturday night, and brunch on Sunday.

This year for walking tour we called in professional help, an excellent decision since even we natives learned new things about the most beautiful city in the world (as the city is modestly referred to by its residents). Something new for us all was the poodle. The shipping magnate Carl Laeisz placed the poodle atop his company's headquarters, the Laeiszhof on the Nikolaifleet in honor of his wife, whose nickname was "poodle". He even gave all his ships names beginning with "P", a tradition the company continues to this day.

The women in the group all agreed that they wished their men would similarly honor them, and the poodle became the official mascot of the weekend. One of them even took to giving commands as the poodle in the third person, as in "The poodle demands your attention", "The poodle is not amused", until finally, at the end of the evening, "The poodle has left the building".

Alas, for me the honor would be counter-productive, as I would have to erect and statue of a mouse atop our restaurants, and as the move Ratatouille shows, rodents and gastronomy do not mix.

The Poodle Is Watching

2010-09-15T19:32:16+00:00

Sculpture atop the Laeiszhof in Hamburg. Explanation will follow. (Source: StadtWiki Hamburg © H. Bergmann)

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

2010-09-01T03:02:13+00:00

On this day in 1990 we arrived in Germany, with all the suitcases we could carry plus 3 cats, the rest of our belongings in a half-container on a slow boat, for what we thought would be a 3 to 5 year stint. Saddam had just invaded Kuwait, Germany had just won the World Cup, and we still didn't know who had killed Laura Palmer. Germany was still in two pieces, but the marriage papers had just been signed the day before and the party would be in a month.

Coming to Germany was an impulse decision, and it was better to be lucky than good. We were in the right place at the right time, reunified Germany was where the action was. Change was happening before our eyes and history was being made at our feet. We had left the US during that decade's banking crisis and the beginning of a war. The US was slow and broken down; Germany was exciting.

We landed first in a run-down top-floor apartment in Kiel with a 4 month lease. We thought we'd be heading to Berlin, but it became clear we'd be staying in Hamburg. Housing was tight, the whole country was on the move, and 50 people would show up for an apartment showing. I think in the end someone pulled a string for us, and we moved into a 3 room apartment in Barmbek just as the slow boat with our belongings pulled up.

My introduction to German life was total immersion. There was no internet, and I knew no other expats. I was naive and optimistic enough to believe that my American degree and determination would be enough to get a job. In the end it worked, but it took 3 years.

I wonder sometimes if today, we were 20 years younger and the same opportunity came up again, we would make the same decision. Times have changed. I somehow doubt it.

Twenty-Five Plus

2010-08-15T13:27:41+00:00

Next weekend we are finally celebrating our silver wedding anniversary. As you may recall, the actual anniversary was in September 2008. So in the spirit of procrastination, the event is entitled "Twenty-Five Plus".

We both have memories of stiff and boring anniversaries that we were forced to endure as children, so we are trying to do the opposite. We'll be at one of our favorite restaurants, the Treibhaus in Marxen, which as the name implies is very green and casual. We're serving "American Barbeque", outside if the weather allows. We're celebrating in the afternoon and will be done by sunset, not partying into the wee hours of the ~~night~~ morning.

We have two special visitors from the States, my mother and my cousin. My cousin has never been to Germany, so we will also be conducting a whirlwind "German essentials in 6 days" tour concluding with a cruise on the Rhine (special request from my mother). Our son has a class trip all next weeks, so that fits.

We've also been able bring our "Basement Project 2009" to a belated tentative conclusion. We had hoped to have business storage space and a guest room with bath done last winter, but the bad weather put us back and, well, the painter just finished up last week. The business space still needs some electrical work and shelving, but we made a trip to Ikea yesterday, and Voila! The guest room is now livable!

So now my project is to create a "25+ Playlist" of early '80s music for our Sonos S5 with which to entertain (or possibly torment) our guests. Can you sing along to "Like A Virgin"?

There and Back Again

2010-07-12T05:17:57+00:00

For those of you who don't follow us on the Twitters, we spent the last two weeks on our annual US trip, which this time included stops in Phoenix and San Francisco before visiting my family in Minnesota.

I suspected when booking that flying outbound through both Paris and Atlanta would be a mistake. Air France departed 3 hours late from Paris on a cramped an aging 747 (the only thing good was the food), and the last place on earth you want to miss a connection is Atlanta. Delta managed to find room for us on the last flight of the evening, so we got into Phoenix 6 hours late, with moods to match.

Arizona was our last US station (1989-90) before coming to Germany, and is always a nostalgic what-would-have-been-if-we-had-never-left experience. We love the heat and the desert, but the politics and economy leave a lot to be desired. We caught up with an old friend and soaked up some 115°F heat,

San Francisco is a station from my childhood (we lived in San Jose from 1st to 6th grade until 1974), and my wife's running joke was that I never took her there. It's not quite like I remember it. We stayed 3 days, time enough for the touristy things (stayed at Fisherman's Wharf, biked the Golden Gate Bridge, rode the cable cars, visited Alcatraz and the Exploratorium) but leaving much to explore should we ever return.

Then in Minnesota we paid a visit to Target Field (stadium is nice, Twins suck at the moment) then spent a beautiful and quiet week at the lake. Christopher had a blast, and we could tell that he's now old enough and competent enough at English that we could send him alone to Grandma and Grandpa for some upcoming school vacation.

Technically we connected an old unlocked iPhone to AT&T pay-as-you-go to stay in touch. We forwarded our business calls via Skype to ignore most of them and return the important ones, and a 100MB data package handled our email when we were out of WLAN range (for iPhone use unlockit.co.nz to set the APN). My wife succumbed to the lure of the iPad, and we were able to manipulate the waiting list at the Apple Store to get her one in Minneapolis on her departure date.

Our Delta flight home via Amsterdam was the opposite of our Air France experience (bad food, everything else OK), and if it weren't for the jet lag, we'd be ready and raring to go. But who left the heat on outside in Germany? Shut it off!

The Backyard

2010-06-02T06:24:30+00:00

Looking out our back window, we see nothing but fields, trees and a couple of horses. It's like our back yard goes on forever. This morning everything was so fresh and green in a misty rain.

Green pastures.

Looking down the Buttermarsh. Our house is at the right, at the end of the path.

The Oak.

Our house from The Oak through the mist.

Asparagus fields. Eleven years ago when we were expecting Christopher, we did a lot of talking to these fields. They assured us everything would be OK.

Looking down our street.

Big Seal

2010-05-22T07:55:10+00:00

Last week the organizers of the FaMi-Siegel held a press conference to present the familiy-friendly employers they honored. We've been making extensive use of the seal in printed and email correspondence, and had stickers printed for the restaurant in Dibbersen and all our company cars.

The stickers are only 15 cm in diameter, and Frauke wanted something that would stand out for the press photo. We thought about an A4 laser printout, but then asked our printer for advice. Usually he find less expensive alternatives for us, but this time he suggested an upgrade. "A4 is way too small! You want 50 cm diameter! On a board!"

The Hamburger Abendblatt was impressed.

That's Frauke in the front row with her big seal on page 2 of the Harburg section. The photo is online at abendblatt.de. Everyone can see the photo, but only subscribers can read the article.

Back to the Roots

2010-05-14T06:22:09+00:00

Christopher and I are spending the Ascension holiday weekend alone. Frauke and her brothers have taken their mother on a short trip to her mother's birthplace, organized for her 80th birthday. I wrote a bit about her for 75th birthday.

She was born in a village in what at the time as Mark Brandenburg, and now is western Poland. She was a miller's daughter, and the house and the mill pond still exist. I mentioned her last visit 10 years ago, but this time she can show the place her children. They've been invited by the present residents for coffee this afternoon.

This is an occasion for immediate family, so Christopher and I stayed behind. I'm sure we'll have a chance to see the place for ourselves sometime in the future. We're keeping ourselves well occupied... yesterday we saw the King Tut exhibit in Hamburg and experienced Avatar in 3D, and have further adventures planned for today.

Deceleration

2010-04-19T17:40:30+00:00

Like many others, we to have a story of being disrupted by the closure of European airspace due to volcanic ash. Our story is however pretty boring.

"We were going to fly to Orlando for a week on business, but we couldn't fly so we stayed home instead."

So instead of attending the McDonald's Worldwide Convention (which occurs every two years, and will probably be in Orlando again), we have an unplanned free week. No plans, no meetings, no mail. Christopher is thrilled by the turn of events. He was supposed to stay with relatives this week, and can stay be home with us.

The Sunday paper described the feeling of not flying as Entschleunigung (or deceleration), so we've adopted that as our key word for this week. We going to relax, not make plans, do some stuff around the house, but in all try not to accomplish anything.

For the record, we didn't get off to a good start with Entschleunigung. We got too much done today.

Old School

2010-04-15T19:38:50+00:00

Last year I mentioned the upcoming choice of a secondary school for our son after the fourth grade... well, now the fourth grade is nearly over, and the decision has been made. It was a choice that 3 months ago we hadn't even considered.

Our state of Lower Saxony still splits into the 3 traditional secondary systems, for simplicity the upper, middle, and lower tracks. We've been told since 3rd grade that our son could expect a recommendation for the upper Gymnasium track, and with the mid-term grades in February, that's what he got.

We had resigned ourselves to choosing between two local public Gymnasiums. We attended open houses at both, and most of our fears were confirmed. The events were loud and chaotic. The teachers sometimes didn't know their students' names. The class sizes are well over 30. The school day ends at 1 pm, with a full load of homework for the afternoon.

However, we noticed a brochure for a private Gymnasium near Lüneburg. It had been recommended to us before, but we had forgotten about it. We went for a visit and were impressed. Day-long school with time to do homework at school. Individual attention from teachers. A motto of "knowledge wants to be learned". Total school size 350 students. Class size maximum 24. No trace of elitism.

There are just two disadvantages. One is the cost, but we can deal with that. The other is the distance, over 45 km. However, interested parents in the next town have organized a bus service. Departure 7:30am, travel time 45 minutes, return at 4:30pm.

We made our decision, and received the papers to sign today. A small step for the next 8 years.

(For now I won't be naming the school here... it's time to start respecting our son's privacy. It can easily be googled from the details I've given.)

Certified Family-Friendly Employer

2010-04-11T11:56:19+00:00

We're very happy and proud that our restaurant in Dibbersen is a charter recipient of the FaMi Seal, recognition of a family-friendly employer. We've already placed the seal prominently on our restaurant website.

The FaMi Seal is a new initiative in northeastern Lower Saxony by the DGB (German Federation of Trade Unions), the regional Handelskammer (Chambers of Commerce) and Arbeitgeberverband (employers' federation), the local Federaton of Women and Business, and the Leuphana University Lüneburg. In other words, the regional establishment for business, labor and education. The process involved the submission of an 8 page application documenting our efforts and an 1/2-day visit from the jury to show that we practice what we preach.

What do we practice? As a nearly 24/7 business, we can coordinate the work schedules of our employees with their families. Employees with children are given priority in vacation planning. We have encouraged and enabled employees with children to move into management positions. We are willing to find individual solutions for problems that may arise. As proof that the process works, we have 4 couples (including our senior manager and his wife) working for us who are all able to coordinate their work schedules with one another and their families (which makes work schedules during school vacations interesting, but it can be done). Since January we have an office manager (who I supervise) who sets her own schedule around school and family.

For us, although the public recognition is nice, this is all part of being (and not just talking about being) a good employer. It also gives us a competitive advantage in the job market, which is becoming tighter all the time as the German population ages. We see the seal not just as a reward, but as a commitment to become even better in the future. Our business will depend on it!

Anything But Sports

2010-04-10T05:39:49+00:00

At first it wasn't easy following baseball from Europe. I followed the 1991 World Series (the one where the Twins beat the Braves and Kirby Puckett drove the bus) by reading box scores on CompuServe and catching glances a day later at the international edition USA Today on the newsstand at the Wandsbek Markt U-Bahn station. That worked until we flew to Mallorca. I caught the scores of Games 6 and 7 on Voice of America via shortwave.

These days it's a lot easier thanks to satellite technology, hard disk recorders and the internets. I can satisfy my baseball cravings as a casual Twins fan by following news feeds from the official Twins site, the StarTribune baseball writers, the Twins page at Yahoo! Sports, and blogger Aaron Gleeman. Aaron and I share the indignity of have been snubbed by the U of M student newspaper Minnesota Daily. Aaron now makes a living from a number of gigs including NBC Sports and Rotoworld.

On the TV side there's ESPN America on German cable and satellite. For example, this week they are showing 12 baseball games live, including the Twins twice. Of course live in the US usually means wee hours of the morning here, so if you have a day job you need to record or wait for a rerun (with breaks cut out, so often better than live). The streams at mlb.tv are better yet. For a price they offer all Major League games either live or on demand, even on an iPhone if you so desire.

Strangely enough, my favorite site for general sports news is the German allesaussersport by Hamburg blogger Kai Pahl. He's a fan of anything and everything, but particularly NFL football. He also knows more about soccer than I ever will, so I get tips on figuring out the Bundesliga (try to say "Bruno Labbadia" and "master tactician" in the same sentence while keeping a straight face). I haven't been able to get into the community at aas, though. The German commenters tend to be hard core fans of whatever sport, and as casual fan of the teams from my youth I guess I don't take sports seriously enough to fit in. I ain't here for business, I'm only here for fun.

V is for Veggieburger

2010-03-04T20:16:54+00:00

I'm a bit late on the uptake here, since it's been on the menu for over 2 weeks now, but the best Marketing Non-Secret we heard about last October was the Veggieburger which has now debuted in Germany.

There are a lot of vegetarians in Germany, and several years ago McDonald's offered a larger vegetarian burger, the Gemüse-Mac, which had a small but loyal fan base. However, it just didn't sell well enough to fit into the production system. Either they were made to order, meaning you had to wait 6 minutes at a minimum, or the sandwiches were held well over the 10 minute holding limit, and you can imagine how that tasted (not good).

In the meantime McDonald's here has implemented a made-to-order system (BOP in McJargon) for deep-fried products, so we can now better offer a fresh but low-selling product. And the market for vegetarian sandwich is still there and growing, particularly among young women, and vegetarians cannot live on salads and french fries alone.

The new Veggieburger now headlines the relaunched SMS line, along with the Cheeseburger and the Chickenburger. The deep-fried patty is based on potatoes, with carrots, red bell peppers, corn and onions, with a creamy sauce, lettuce and cheese. It's not a low-calorie sandwich. The calories per 100g (250) is the same as the Cheeseburger, but the Veggieburger is 20% heavier so has more total calories (360 vs. 300). It tastes alright, I think, although when I have 300 calories to spare on a snack I'd personally take a Cheeseburger. :-)

As businesspeople we're happy with how the product is starting out. Sales are in the neighborhood of the Hamburger, and it's attracting a target group that wouldn't be so inclined to visit us. The price of 1.10 means we've broken the 1 barrier, and we can see how the guests react.

There are no TV spots yet for the Veggieburger, but it's pictured briefly in this cute spot for SMS. Even for non-German speakers, I think the dialog is clear (the father is going to McDonald's and asks if she wants anything). Don't think the spot would fly in the States, though... :-)

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Headlines

2010-02-15T15:47:35+00:00

If even my mother says that my blog hasn't been updated for a while, it must be time to write something. Here are the headlines from the past couple of weeks.

* My birthday (48) came and went. Another year older and deeper in debt.

* We've had snow and ice in the Hamburg area for 7 weeks straight now, the longest anyone can remember. Even the newspapers are sick of it. The road departments have long run out of salt and sand, so the streets and sidewalks are horrible. We hear temperatures might get back above freezing at the end of the week.
* The cold weather means our restaurant sales are way below plan. We figure the snow has cost us 40K in sales and counting, especially in Dibbersen which is only reachable by car. Our lobby furnace has needed constant attention, and just today the water pipes leading to the McCafé froze solid.

* Christopher's midterm grades were good (solid Bs, or since they use numbers here, solid 2s). Since elementary school ends after the 4th grade in our state, we have to choose a secondary school for next year. He was recommended for the Gymnasium, the academic track. There is no secondary school in Jesteburg, so we have several nearby schools to choose from.

So, spring can start any time now!

Male Striptease...

2010-02-03T18:34:13+00:00

(That title should attract attention!) Or, A Different Kind of Dollar Menu.

We've been giggling about this story all day, but this was a nearby restaurant. If it were one of ours we wouldn't think it was so funny. I won't quote the brand or location to protect the innocent.

Quick translation: "Male strip tease starts fight in fast-food restaurant. According to police a fight broke out Monday evening with a 30-year-old injured with pepper spray. A young man had dropped his pants. At 11:35 several young men entered the restaurant. As a 20-year-old admitted he didn't have enough to pay for his order, the 27-year-old female cashier told him 'you can strip for it'. The young man pulled down his pants. The cashier's boyfriend (waiting for her in the lobby) did not find that funny at all, and attacked the young man. In the resulting tumult the 30-year-old was sprayed in the eye, and both sides filed assault charges with the police."

Moral: be careful with suggestive selling!

The story is also at abendblatt.de, but you have to go through a paywall to be able to read it.

Value Added Tax on Nothing

2010-01-26T15:51:43+00:00

I asked this question on Twitter and got a lot of guesses, so I'll try it here for the blog crowd.

In February we're about to start another coffee cup giveaway with our McMenüs (Value Meals). Even though the cup is free, we have to adjust our Value Added Tax (similar to sales tax) programming in the registers. Why do you think we have to pay VAT on an item that is free?

So you don't get distracted... yes, Germany has different VAT rates for restaurant food eaten in or taken out. A porcelain cup is not food, so is taxed the same regardless. The answer has nothing to do with eat-in vs take-out.

Update: The answer is below in the comments, for everyone curious about German VAT regulations!

New Sensation

2010-01-11T12:43:40+00:00

Time to bring PapaScott into the new decade (if you believe decades begin in '0 years and not '1 years, that is). I was going to write about how this is the first new year in business that we weren't rushing around with new things, but I guess it's a bit late for that now.

We got caught on the edge of the snow storm that hit northern Germany for the weekend, making things really bad on the Baltic coast (Spiegel Online has some pictures). Only about 10 inches of snow, but the wind made the roads no fun yesterday. School was cancelled in all counties near us, so Christopher gets a snow day today.

The German media doesn't know much about broadcasting weather warnings. Every podunk American local TV station has weather radar that shows the exact location of incoming storms. Here they can announce SHOCK HORROR DRAMA SNOW DISASTER is on the way, but can't say where, exactly. We got better storm information from a free iPhone app than from the public TV networks we pay for.

Double Digits!

2009-12-27T11:01:01+00:00

Christopher turns 10 today! He celebrated with a breakfast of pancake cake with whipped cream and strawberry jam á la Pettson and Findus and continued with the construction of the LEGO Emerald Night, which took just 2 hours. Next step is to motorize!

He's making a list, checking it twice...

2009-12-23T08:45:08+00:00

Merry Christmas from Frauke, Scott and Christopher!

As usual I arranged for our Christmas cards for the US to be printed and mailed by cardstore, saving time and postage. The typewriter picture from last February is our favorite this year. Here's the printed message from inside... nothing new for our regular readers. :-)

We've now been in business 2-1/2 years, and having expanded from 1 restaurant to 3 this year on January 1, we've had plenty to do the past year. We have 130 employees, including 13 trainees starting a career with us through trade school or college programs. The business is still fun, exciting and satisfying. We were able take a few days off, spending 10 days in Minnesota in July and tacking on days off with Christopher after meetings in Munich and the Canary Islands (Spain). We're spending the holidays at home, inviting the Petersen family for roasted goose on the 27th. Christopher turns 10 this month and is in the 4th grade, his last year of German elementary school. His passion is LEGO and all things related to science. He also goes inline skating and has just joined the local youth volunteer fire department. When he's in the mood, he helps out in the restaurants as cashier back-up or drive-thru runner. In the house we're currently renoving the basment into a proper office and guest room. No travel plans yet for 2010, other than a meeting in Orlando in April. We might actually properly celebrate our belated silver wedding anniversary this summer. This summer also marks the 20th year that we've been in Germany. Hard to believe in 1990 we wanted to stay 3, maybe 5 years. Now we have a franchise contract until at least 2028, unless Christopher decides to buy us out sooner!

Bad Translation

2009-12-06T20:40:18+00:00

I've been in Germany too long to be really shocked by anything anymore, but last night I had to let my jaw drop. Christopher was watching the Disney-owned TV channel SuperRTL, which was showing a Christmas special from the cartoon "Recess". According to the German dub, this boy was dressed as a "Christmas Tree" (screenshot from YouTube).

I'm assuming the cause was ignorance rather than anti-Semitism, since I'm sure TV shows are translated quickly rather than carefully. But then again, you never know...

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

2009-12-05T07:27:49+00:00

A tweet yesterday from Dave Winer reminded me that online blogging service editthispage.com opened to the public on that date in 1999, 10 years ago, thanks to Dave and his company at the time, Userland Software.

Which means that today, a day later (due to the time difference between California and Germany), www.papascott.de is 10 years old.

A number of other blogs got started with edithispage.com as well. A few of the names from the Most Visited Sites from August 2000 are still around. I have an etp-vets folder at Google Reader to keep up with them after all this time. I've had the joy of meeting a few of these writers in person.

To celebrate, I'm cleaning up the archive from that first month, December 1999. It was a very important month for us, preparing for Christmas and new arrivals. Our Christmas got cut short (posted while we were running out the door!), and our lives were changed forever. (These days short posts like that would probably be twittered. Will our tweets still be available 10 years from now?)

Don't expect too much from the old articles... the editthispage.com site is long gone, so most of the links are dead. The macros (items in quote marks automatically replaced by images and such) don't work except where I've replaced them by hand. Here's my favorite macro from back then: "curly". Click on him and he talks!

Thanks, Dave!

Grünkohl Turkey Day

2009-11-26T16:27:21+00:00

We've never gotten in the habit of celebrating American Thanksgiving here in Germany, but as I mentioned on Twitter today, by coincidence we are going out for a traditional meal this Thanksgiving evening. The local Wirtschaftsrunde (chamber of commerce, sort of) is holding their annual Grünkohl dinner. I've never had it, and I suspect that Frauke is taking me along to the dinner not just to keep her company, but so that we can split one portion and she only has to eat half as much.

According to the Internets, Grünkohl translates as "curly kale" and is a north German dish often served with Pinkel (small sausages) (no, not pinkeln, that's something else). Judging from this picture from Wikipedia, the vegetable content of the meal is actually quite small...

Wish us luck, or at least Guten Appetit!

Update after the fact: The Grünkohl was in fact very tasty! Details in the comments below.

And I Saw Her Standing There

2009-11-16T23:01:59+00:00

Since we're being nostalgic this month, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that, how about we go even further back, to November 1979. The Iran hostage crisis had just begun on November 4, but I can't recall any of the other events. A month later, the Who Concert tragedy and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I can recall them.

But on Saturday, November 17, 1979 something occurred in Montevideo, Minnesota, that changed my life. I was 17, and at a Lutheran Church youth meeting I first laid my eyes on a 16-year-old AFS exchange student from West Germany who would later become my wife.

Of course, I didn't recognize it as a life-changing event at the time. I only noticed her because we were both wearing AFS sweatshirts. That summer I had been an exchange student with AFS myself to Brazil. I remember talking to her, and thinking she was nice. It wasn't until we met a second time a couple of months later I realized that this girl was something special. That second meeting I associate with the Miracle on Ice, but according to the calendar that must have been a two weeks later.

Her town was 25 miles from mine, and she had no driver's license, so it wasn't so easy to keep in touch. The high school winter sports season was in full spring, and we managed to "accidentally" meet at various basketball and wrestling tournaments. The teams from my town were unusually successful that year, and her town had the largest gym to host the tournament games. Once the sports seasons were over, we had to go on our first real date, the James Bond movie Moonraker with Roger Moore.

And as it is with high school students, I took her to my senior prom, and she invited me to her senior prom. But I never made it... I crashed my parents' car into a bridge siding on my way to meet her. She found a replacement date that same evening, but only just for that night.

That summer she returned to Germany, and we thought our relationship would end. But we kept in touch, via the best means possible at the time, air mail. She continued her Abitur, I started college, and that winter we simultaneously came to the conclusion that our relationship was something worth continuing.

And no, the rest is not history, because it continues to this very day.

PS: If you like this nostalgic kind of stuff you may also want to read High School from October 2005, Young, Dumb and Excited from September 2002, and Christopher's Guide to the Expo from September 2000.

Marketing Non-Secrets 3

2009-11-12T17:52:35+00:00

I promised that as the marketing initiatives we learned about at our franchisee meeting in October were released, I'd mention them here. Has anyone noticed the new initiative, or more correctly, the old initiative that was rebranded this week?

Back to my letter codes: S is for "SMS". The value menu segment (the German equivalent of the US Dollar Menu) has been renamed to "Schnell Mal Sparen" (which is hard to translate, maybe "quickly save now"). The products and the prices are the same as before, and the new logo is very similar to the old one. I'm sure that most customers haven't even noticed the difference.

So what is the difference exactly? Other than that "SMS" is recognized by the world as a quick and easy form of communication? After all, the old name was very well recognized, why change?

The old name had a fatal flaw. It included the number "one" (twice even), and implied that the prices of the value items would always and forever be exactly 1.00€. The SMS name no longer promises a price, and is thus flexible to include items that do not cost exactly 1.00€. If things go as planned, we'll be adding an item or two that cost a bit more than 1.00€ to the SMS menu in the coming months.

Are we going to raise the price of the existing SMS items? No, that would be stupid in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis that's just now hitting Germany with full effect. But we're using the economic climate to rebrand the value menu now to have the flexibility to adjust the menu in the future. That's a luxury we have as a brand that is growing while the total QSR market (and thus our competitors) are shrinking. We'll be able to use SMS as a marketing vehicle for years to come, irregardless of increasing costs or inflation.

As The Wall Fell

2009-11-09T03:49:09+00:00

It's strange that as the one world event that directly changed our lives, I don't remember where I was when the Berlin Wall fell or even exactly how I heard about it.

In November 1989 we were in Chandler, Arizona, over 5000 miles from Berlin. We had moved to Arizona in May, and we didn't yet have permanent jobs. At first we had both helped out managing a McDonald's restaurant in the desert, but we were sure our future would be in the Valley of the Sun. Frauke was at a restaurant in South Phoenix, I was working for a temp agency. We had picked a bad time to move to Arizona, though. The Savings and Loan crisis had broken out, and the economy was flat.

Arizona is 8 hours behind Germany, so evening in Berlin was early afternoon for us. We hadn't been following the events in East Germany that closely... we knew about the Monday Demonstrations, the refugees escaping through Hungary and Czechoslovakia and that there had been a large demonstration in East Berlin, but had no idea how close the regime was to collapse. Frauke got a call to turn on CNN from her friend Gabi, who herself had escaped from Hungary. I vaguely remember hearing the news in my car... it had to have been on the radio, on NPR, since it was still the BCP age (Before Cell Phones). I don't remember watching on television or thinking that the world from now on would be different.

What changed for us personally over the following weeks is that Germany became interesting. Germany and Europe would be changing for the better, and we could imagine spending a part of our future there, especially since the stalled economy in Arizona meant we weren't getting ahead where we were. It was in fact the franchisee in South Phoenix that suggested Frauke think about Germany, and he had the contacts within McDonald's get her application started.

By summer it was clear that the door was open if we wanted to make the move, and that it was time to make a decision. We were following that year's World Cup in Italy, and jokingly said that if Germany would win, we would move. The final was on July 8, Germany did win, and 6 weeks later we had sold or given away most of our possessions, packed a half-container with the rest, drove to Minnesota to say good-bye to my parents, loaded up 4 suitcases and 3 cats on a plane, and were on our way to Hamburg (first to Kiel, where we had a temporary apartment). Germany was not yet unified; reunification and the first elections took place that fall.

We ended up in Hamburg pretty much by chance. We figured we'd eventually end up in Berlin, but McDonald's didn't have an office there yet. They did have offices in Munich, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Hamburg, and applied to Hamburg as it was the closest to where Frauke grew up. It turned out we'd never leave.

Don't Be So Damned Sure!

2009-11-01T23:23:37+00:00

The best lesson for surviving as an expat I learned my first quarter... in fact, my first weeks at the University of Minnesota.

That lesson came early in the "Introduction to Theater" course taught by the legendary Arthur Ballet. My best friend Beth from high school was going to major in Theater, and even though I planned to major in International Relations, I had to take some Liberal Arts classes, so we took the class together. It was one of the most popular courses on campus, even though Prof. Ballet's health was poor and we often saw his lectures on video tape rather than live and in person.

As a history of theater, we started with ancient Greece, and one of Prof. Ballet's favorite plays was Oedipus The King", which he summed up in a single phrase: "Don't be so damned sure!" Don't ever assume that you're right, about anything! Anytime! Oedipus thought he was king of the world, but in fact he killed his father and married his mother. (In fact, even 30 years after I took the course, you can still find a Google result for Arthur Ballet "don't be so damned sure".)

For an expat, this means you have to be ready for anything. Anything, and everything, can be different than what you expect. In fact, you have to question what you expect. A trivial example: do you want to bake chocolate chip cookies in Germany? I'm sorry, you won't find chocolate chips in the grocery stores here. Or baking soda. Or brown sugar. Or even vanilla extract.

Even if baking is not your thing, the concept remains... you have to be ready for anything and eveything to be different. And after a while, you'll notice that most of the differences are superficial, and the most important things that humans have in common are the same.

To venture back to theater, another question raised by Professor Ballet is one he never answered in his introductory class. He mentioned a line that was the most profound in the history of theater, from "The Duchess of Malfi", as the Duchess is killed by her brother, he says “Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.” One night, on our way home after heavy drinking, Beth and I had the answer... we looked at each other and knew we had the meaning that Prof. Ballet had hinted at. But the next morning, it was gone. And today, if we were to meet and one of us would start to say "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle...", we would both remember we once had the answer, but it is now gone.

Marketing Non-Secrets 2

2009-10-22T21:21:27+00:00

Following up on my marketing post from yesterday, I can cover the next two points rather quickly, since they are both in the current TV campaign for "Los Wochos". You only need to watch one spot, and only pay attention to the last 5 seconds to get both points. In fact, the first point requires only a screenshot.

Point FP is "Food Photography". The past year or so our spots have featured "exploding food", with action shots of the inside of a sandwich, fries flying into the package, and drinks slopping over the cup. The new trend, currently mentioned in the food photography entry at Wikipedia, is a natural look. Instead of a perfect glossed burger, the photo is more realistic, an unevenly focussed close-up from above of an unperfectly dressed burger with crumbs and lettuce lying about. Frauke and I call it the "crooked burger" look, and it's already in the current TV spot, and more photos in this style may be coming to in-store POP this winter.

Point SC is "Secondary Claim". The primary claim for McDonald's is of course "I'm lovin' it!", or in German, "Ich liebe es!" Last year we heard Global CMO Mary Dillon explain that the unspoken promise made by the McDonald's brand is "simple easy enjoyment".

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The current spot ends by vocalizing this promise: "Einfach geniessen" (or "simply enjoy"), and the phrase occurs in the radio spots as well. We were told to expect to hear (and see) more of "Einfach geniessen" as a unifying theme for the brand.

That's all the points I can reveal for now... number 4 will have to wait until next month.

Marketing Non-Secrets

2009-10-21T06:02:29+00:00

Last week we were at the annual fall franchisee meeting in Tenerife, where we had to endure sunny skies and 30°C while those at home had a week of clouds and rain. We don't choose where to go for these meetings, we just go where McDonald's tells us to go.

One highlight of these meetings is the marketing presentation, where the marketing department tells us how they intend to spend our money for the following year. Coming from marketing people, the presentation is of course very well done. This year, however, the content was also impressive. There were a number of simple, clear points where our immediate reaction was to nod and say yes, that's a good idea.

I'm not talking about specific campaigns here. As to whether we will be doing a Monopoly game, a World Cup promotion in June, or a Coke Glass giveaway next summer, you can probably guess the answers yourself. And for you Web 2.0 aficionados, I must disappoint you. There was no mention of social media at all.

I know some of my readers have a professional interest in marketing, so without giving away any secrets, I can mention the points that impressed us as they are implemented and made public. (To jog my memory in the coming months, my list of points is H, FP, SC, S, V, PP, S4, and TC.)

Point H is "Happy" (or "Mr. Happy"), the new European Happy Meal campaign featuring animated Happy Meal boxes that started here in September. As adults, the spots make no sense to us at all, but Christopher rolls over laughing every time he sees one, so they must work. They are certainly colorful and loud.

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Through a bit of Googling, I found out at Lineboil that the campaign was developed by TBWA\FRANCE, and the spots are directed by by Laurent Nicolas at Passion Pictures Paris. Spot checking websites for the major McDonald's countries in Europe, I found versions of Happy in France, Spain, Italy, Russia and Poland.

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Barely, Slightly...

2009-09-29T20:06:29+00:00

It's been two days since the German Bundestag election, which a center-right coalition of Union and FDP was able to win, and I haven't yet thought of anything to say. I've been waiting for someone more intelligent than I to comment, but since she hasn't posted yet, I'll have to wing it.

The best news is that the worst result was avoided, namely the continuation of the do-nothing grand coalition of Union and SPD with both parties shackled to one another. Whether or not one agrees with the direction, at least the new government will have a direction, which the grand coalition (by definition) did not.

The new center-right coalition is also stable, in that it does not depend on so-called "overhang" seats (which have been declared unconstitutional, but only in 2011) nor on the whims of the junior partner (a weakened SPD might have been tempted to later dump the Union in favor the Greens and the Left party).

Both main parties lost ground, but the SPD lost big time, with over 38% fewer votes than in 2005. The minor parties all had record results, in particular the ex-communist Left party was able to gain at the expense of the SPD. The SPD will now have time to sort out its defeat and how to mend fences with the Left, if it doesn't want to see politics dominated by the Union for decades to come.

As for us, we're not disappointed to see a more pro-business slant for the next few years, although I would have wished for some Green influence against nuclear power. Change comes slowly in Germany, so new directions come only barely and slightly, but better than no direction at all.

It's also worth mentioning the Pirate Party, which on a platform of internet freedom and data privacy won 2% of the vote (falling well short of the 5% threshold to enter the Bundestag). I personally find the Pirate Party to be a waste of time and effort. The issues they raise are important, in fact too important to relegate to a splinter party. They should be lobbying today's politicians instead of starting a new party that may or (most likely) may not have influence in 5 years time.

Easy Morning for Free: The Coupon

2009-09-26T20:01:47+00:00

The coupon for tomorrow's free breakfast on election day just went online today. They are good at all McDonald's nationwide, but only tomorrow from 9 to 11 am, so you have to be quick! Print out the PDF and you won't have to buy a newspaper!

My New Favorite Oktoberfest Quote

2009-09-23T04:17:19+00:00

It feels like a kegger at the psycho ward.</p>

Wired on Oktoberfest Etiquette (via bluelectric)

Easy Morning for Free goes Nationwide

2009-09-20T09:48:17+00:00

When we did our Easy Morning for Free promotion in our restaurant in Dibbersen last year, we received a lot of positive response from within McDonald's wondering whether the idea could work on a larger scale. A similar promotion was done this spring when the new breakfast menu was introduced in Munich and Stuttgart. But wouldn't it be better yet if McDonald's could invite all of Germany to a free breakfast?

Next Sunday, election day in Germany, that dream will come true. Next Saturday's Bild Zeitung and Sunday's Bild am Sonntag will carry coupons for a free breakfast (1 per person) at all participating McDonald's in Germany from 9 to 11 on Sunday. If you'd rather not buy a paper, the coupons will be available online as well.

The political choices may be pretty weak this year, however the McDonald's ballot offers a much wider variety of choices than the political ballot, No first and second votes, though, only one coupon per customer.

And the crowd goes "Yeaahh!"

2009-09-18T19:33:07+00:00

It all started with with a poster for an Angela Merkel rally in Hamburg...

"The Chancellor is coming", and someone scribbled "and the crowd goes 'Yeaahh!'" (or something to that effect). Someone else snapped a picture and posted it to the internets last week. A lot of people thought it was cool, and wouldn't it be cooler yet if the crowd would really go "Yeaahh!"

So this evening there were about 500 people gathered at the rally who went "Yeaahh" at Merkel's every word.

No, I wasn't there. I have a wife and son, I don't have time for nonsense like this. :-)

Update: The action made it into Spiegel Online, but they don't get it either.

Carpet Surfing

2009-09-13T13:16:18+00:00

At the city festival in Buchholz, the city power utility had a rolling carpet on which one could "surf". Christopher of course had to try it out. He only wiped out twice, but no rug burns. Here are a couple of iPhone snapshots...

Drinks were being served by the local Junge Union, the youth wing of the CDU party, which I mention only to annoy my German readers (most of whom are not pro-CDU :-).

Exit Now!

2009-09-12T13:05:24+00:00

It took a bit longer than we hoped, but to make sure you find our restaurant on the Winsener Straße in Hamburg-Harburg we've complemented our sign on the A7 southbound before the Fleestedt exit with one for the A7 northbound.

It's hard to tell from the closeup, but the sign is 12 meters wide and nearly 3 meters high. Here's a wider view.

The sign has to be large to make up for a sub-optimal location 1) on the left side of the Autobahn and 2) right before the exit. Like the sign says, you have to exit now!

Inner Peace

2009-09-11T19:26:37+00:00

After 8 years, I think I've found peace. Inner peace, anyway. Outer peace is so hard to find these days. Just ask anyone in Afghanistan.

But what has changed in that time? Not much. The Marienstrasse is still in Hamburg, the Al-Quds mosque too. We've sent soldiers abroad, more soldiers in Iraq have fallen than those who fell that day into thin air.

This summer as we were in New York, we took the subway to Ground Zero, to catch a glimpse of hallowed ground. It was a tourist spot, with hawkers and food stands, but inside the fences, even on Saturday, the site was alive with construction work. That comforted me somehow, and we moved on.

But what has changed? Nothing but the passage of time. Time closes all wounds, but are do the wounds really heal? All wounds leave a scar. I wish I could forget that day, but time moves on and the scars remain.

And so it goes.

I Gotta Feeling

2009-09-10T12:37:13+00:00

... that tonight's going to be a good night.

I flew to Munich last weekend for the 5th (my 2nd) annual Whiney Expat Meetup, and it was indeed 2 good good nights, and the days were good as well. It was just the right mix of organization and spontaneity, and having all gotten acquainted online, we could skip the introductions and get right to the good part.

Munich is a nice city to visit, a good backdrop for fun and conversation for about 20 assorted expats and tag-along Germans. I didn't see anything I hadn't seen before, execpt for the Villa Stuck (the interior reminded me of the Kunststätte Bossard near us) and the Eisbach surfers.

Most of my fellow expats prefer to remain anonymous (I have enough trouble keeping up with real names, so matching up fake names and blog names is a bit too much), so I'll just point to the public Flickr groups WEBUM and WEBUM2009 and the online accounts at zurika, amiexpat, noapathyallowed, regensblog, snooker and elmada (three times even), not to mention several others whom I've missed or who haven't yet chosen to share.

We have developed a long and drawn-out process (hosted here) of choosing a date and place for the meetup somewhat similar to choosing a US presidential candidate, but early polls indicate 2010 will probably be in the early fall again in a somewhat northern city, say Berlin or Hamburg

And then we'll do it again.

American Breakfast 1994

2009-09-02T02:27:57+00:00

A guest brought us this post card advertising breakfast at McDonald's in Germany. It must be from 1994.. the prices on the back are in "Marks" and Denglish was obviously very in. Modern breakfast marketing looks different.

My Health Insurance and Welcome to It

2009-08-14T21:18:25+00:00

With the current debate on health insurance in the United States, some of my readers might be interested in my health coverage here in Germany.

Most employees are required to join the public insurance system. It's financed something like Social Security, with a percentage (currently 14.9%) of income up to a certain limit (currently 3675 per month) split between employer and employee. The system covers children and students through their parents, as well as the unemployed and pensioners. Insured patients do not see any bills, but fixed co-payments for prescriptions, office visits per quarter, dental, and optical. There is not a single insurer, but nearly 200 different "sickness funds" with similar coverage and rates. Lost wages due to sickness are covered (actually, the employer pays the first 6 weeks, the insurer thereafter).

High-income employees and the self-employed can opt out of the public system and purchase private insurance. Private insurance might be cheaper than public insurance (since premiums don't rise with your income) or might not (children cost extra, premiums depend on your age). However the coverage is better and generally there is a set deductable rather than co-payments. And as an employee, the employer covers half the premium.

As a free-lancer, I was able to opt out of the public system in my early 30s and lock in good rates. Through a loophole in the system (involving extended part-time work), I'm now permanently opted out, regardless of my salary. My monthly cost for medical and dental is €135 with a €500 yearly deductable. That covers virtually anything, including lost wages. Even expenses when visiting the US are covered.

Our disadvantages as private patients? Women pay more (pregnancy risk). We have to pay for Christopher. And our premiums may go up with time (with increases in inflation and life expectancy).

The German health system is not perfect. The systems in France and Switzerland might be better. There are fairness issues... private insurance compensate better than the public system, so doctors favor private patients. Administrative costs for the sickness funds are high, and there is fraud. Drug costs are high, doctors are poorly compensated, and there are too many hospital beds. The system undergoes constant tinkering... but the system, which dates to the 19th century, still works.

(As an employer, the multitude of sickness funds, covering sick pay for the first 6 weeks, and keeping track of various classes of employees with and without insurance is a bureaucratic nightmare. But we outsource to a payroll accountant that deals with all that.)

The biggest benefit of the health system is peace of mind. I simply do not have to worry financially about getting sick. I still may worry about pain and needles and hospital food, but I don't need to worry about paying the bill.

Updated 17 Aug 2009 Added current rates to 2nd paragraph (14.9% of income up to 3675 per month).

T and A Politics

2009-08-12T11:00:05+00:00

I'm sorry, but when I saw these two posters yesterday, I knew they just were begging to be combined in a single post. The poster on the right has managed to hit a taboo-trifecta (race, nudity, homosexualtiy) with maybe even more taboos I haven't noticed (bad nail polish?).

Two great tastes that go great... no, I won't finish that thought.

(Left: Berlin CDU Bundestag candidate Vera Lengsfeld, "We have more to offer", seen at 50% of my DNA. Right: Local Green poster in Kaarst, NRW, "The only reason to vote black", seen at AmiExpat)

Na?

2009-08-10T16:05:34+00:00

The past two weeks these posters have been sprouting like mushrooms.

What do they mean? I've gathered the following facts:

Federal elections are in 6 weeks
The background color is SPD red
The back of the poster is stamped with "SPD Harburg"

So the posters have something to do with the SPD. The local paper explained the mystery that the posters will be updated twice before the election with more letters to form a complete sentence. I would think, though, with the bad polls the SPD has been getting, they'd be better off getting their complete message out now rather than waiting until later. By then it might be too late.

Then we have this. I take it the graphic artist is a plant from the opposing party and deliberately sabotaged this poster.

On the other hand, there is the "... na" from the first poster. That mystery is now solved! But what is the candidate's last name again, in case we wanted to vote for her?

Why PapaScott?

2009-08-08T16:12:20+00:00

Why PapaScott?

The oldest remaining shards of what would be become PapaScott date back 10 years to August 1999 and were posted with Blogger, a shiny new technology at the time.

In 1999 we were pregnant with Christopher, and we were calling each other cute names like MamaMaus and PapaScott. And when I started a site on the brand spaning new edithispage.com, it didn't take long for me to start calling it PapaScott, even after Christopher was born later that month. The name fits, even today.

So why PapaScott? Why not?

Nine Azubis

2009-08-03T07:57:46+00:00

Two years ago on the first of July we officially began our business adventure. However, it's more appropriate to look back on our two years of business experience a month later, the first workday in August. Today is the beginning of the new trade school term, and today four new Azubis are beginning their education and their career with us, joining the five Azubis we already have for a total of nine.

Azubi spelled out in full is Auszubildender, and translates roughly as apprentice or trainee. They are trade school students who have finished at least the 10th grade, and work with us half-time while learning the official trade Fachmann/Fachfrau für Systemgastronomie (Professional for Quick Service Restaurants). It's a 2-1/2 year program that encompasses all business aspects of the restaurant. Upon completion the Azubi is a fully-qualified Shift Leader and is on-track to advance into restaurant management.

We started with 1 Azubi in 2007 when we started our business in Dibbersen (she is now a Shift Leader for us). We hired 2 new Azubis in 2008. Through acquiring the two restaurants in Harburg, we hired 3 more. And today 4 new Azubis are starting with us. We are hoping for a fifth, and if successful we can have a round number of 10 Azubis for our third year in business.

They may not all succeed. Azubis are young people with little or no work experience, and they may find that night and weekend shifts and sometimes hectic work days are not what they expected for their career. Those who do succeed, though, are the future of our business. The young people we train now will be running our restaurants in a few years.

The beginning of our third trade school year is the perfect day to celebrate our third year in business, and the growth of our Azubi team from one to nine (maybe ten) in two years is the perfect sign of our growth and expectations for the future.

Lego Theater

2009-07-29T20:00:17+00:00

In the category "things my son does that amazes me" is the movie theater he's been building with Legos the past couple of days. He wants to make a Transformers' video for YouTube, and had the idea of a making a "film in film", so he needed a movie theater...

Liberty's Crown

2009-07-24T10:58:16+00:00

On our way home from Minnesota, we stopped for two nights in New York. That was my first time there, excepting a trip when I was 20 and took a Greyhound bus for 2 days from Minneapolis. That's not an experience I care to remember or repeat. As first timers for a weekend, we hit the standard tourist spots... Times Square, Empire State Building, and (especially for Christopher) the American Museum of Natural History.

We were however lucky enough to get Crown Tickets for the Statue of Liberty. The Crown was just re-opened to visitors on July 4th, and we were there a week later on July 11th. We were able to order tickets online the first day they went on sale. We were lucky. Only 30 people are allowed in the crown each hour. Right now, Crown Tickets are sold out through October and no Saturdays are available until December 5. Crown access costs $3 in addition to normal admission and ferry fare.

The hitch is that the crown is only accessible by staircase, with 354 steps. The staircase spirals and is a bit tight at the end. Children must be at least 4 feet tall and able to climb the stairs by themselves.

The tickets can't be printed out online, you need to pick them up at the will call window. We were worried about long lines, so we arrived at noon, 2 hours ahead of our scheduled time. That was way too early... there was no line at will call, and the waiting time for reserve tickets was just 15 minutes (those without reserve tickets were waiting 90 minutes). We hung out for an hour in Battery Park, enjoying a microbrew from the Picnick kiosk while Christopher explored the musical sculptures.

We then joined the horde for the ferries, which were much like the Hadag commuter ferries in Hamburg harbor except for the airport-style security screening. Once on Liberty Island, we separated from the horde to head to the info booth to show our official ID and pick up wrist bands and instructions for the crown. The instructions were basically "ask the rangers along the way where to go next". No bags or backpacks are allowed, so we had to lock those up. There's another security screening (this time with a puffer machine).

We entered the monument and were told to go straight on up the stairs. I lost count at 200, but the climb was easier than I imagined. There were a couple of rangers posted along the way to offer encouragement, but suddenly, there we were. Two rangers were at the top, and together with them for several minutes were alone on top of the world.

We could feel the statue swaying slightly in the wind, and could see the torch moving back and forth. The day was relatively cool, so it was comfortable inside. Christopher asked the rangers about going into the torch... they told him it's been closed since 1916, when German saboteurs blew up a weapons depot on the Jersey side, and the shock waves slightly tilted the torch arm.

In short, if you can plan enough ahead to get the tickets, the climb to the crown is well worth it!

McDonald's Versus

2009-07-23T04:49:07+00:00

This starts out as an ordinary McDonald's spot, but there's a surprise at about 28 seconds.

McDonald's Versus from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

(via kottke)

Happy Fourth

2009-07-05T22:15:24+00:00

Happy 4th of July weekend from Starbuck, Minnesota! We'll be back when we're done relaxing...

P.S. We splurged a bit on the rental car.

Interesting Drive

2009-06-27T04:47:52+00:00

Your drive on the Autobahn A7 southbound toward Hannover between HH-Marmstorf and Seevetal-Fleestedt has just gotten more interesting...

We have something even grander planned for the northbound side. Stay tuned.

Easy Morning For Free Again!

2009-06-18T16:28:47+00:00

We're doing it again next Tuesday, this time in Harburg. But PapaScott readers don't have to wait until the coupon appears in the newspaper, they can print out the coupon here and receive VIP treatment to boot! (We haven't yet decided what the VIP treatment will be...)

Anatomical Drawing

2009-06-13T08:55:24+00:00

Christopher has been busy learning about and drawing whales. This morning he taped together several sheets of paper and started drawing an internal view of a sperm whale with skeleton and organs. Looks like he'll need more paper to finish.

Christopher's Platform

2009-06-09T15:38:06+00:00

All the news about elections (European and upcoming German) reminded Christopher of two things. One, because of his dual citizenship, he can vote twice as often as either of his parents. Secondly, if he were to run for German Chancellor*, he would campaign for the following.

More schools
More help for victims of natural disaster, and research to prevent such disasters
Energy conservation, less oil and coal, more wind and solar
Abolish war

Sounds like a solid platform, but the devil is going to be in the details.

*Yes, we realize he previously announced his candidacy for the US Presidency. We'll issue a statement when we know which is correct.

Pesky Parliament

2009-06-08T08:11:06+00:00

I'm often annoyed by the politics at Rainy Day, by an Irish expat in Munich, but he produces enough gems for me to keep him in my feed reader. For instance, today on the 42% turnout for this year's European elections:

The idea that holding direct elections to the European Parliament would somehow create a common European identity has been exposed as nonsense. The good people of Estonia don't know or care about the factors that determined the voting of their fellow EU citizens in Austria, Slovenia, Malta and Luxembourg. And vice versa. There is no European election is the sense that the press keeps on about. The separate national elections within Europe are sold by a compliant media as being somehow pan-European.

Direct elections were meant to create the notion of democracy within the European Union, but real power in Brussels remains with institutions that are not accountable to anybody.

I would say that the institutions are in the end accountable to the heads of state of the member countries, i.e. Merkel, Sarkozy and Co., who are much happier with the present arrangement of back-room control than they would be with a pesky democratic parliament.

Buzzard Attack!

2009-06-05T10:19:00+00:00

If you bike through our village, you'll see the following warning as you come into to town...

Yes, our village is protected by an attack buzzard! A couple of years ago 2 cyclists were indeed attacked by a buzzard that was nesting nearby.

However I have no idea how I would defend myself if I were actually attacked by the buzzard? Duck and cover?

Hybrid Fryer

2009-05-27T17:15:37+00:00

Just to show that we not only make sexy investments with French models (not to be confused with promotions with German top models), this morning at our restaurant in Dibbersen we installed the new low-oil-volume (LOV) fryer that we've been planning for over a year, replacing a double vat with a new triple vat.

Astute readers will note that this is not the Frymaster model we were considering last year, but is instead manufactured by Henny Penny. The principle is however the same. The low-oil-volume vat holds just half the volume of a traditional fryer, so we only have to heat half as much oil. To maintain the quality of the oil, the fryer automatically filters the vat after 12 cooking cycles (normally a vat is filtered once daily), and tops itself off when the vat starts to run low.

Think of the fryer as just like a hybrid car... the tank is smaller and we have to fill it less often, so we save energy and money. We're looking for both good performance and good gas (er, I mean oil) mileage.

Spur of the Moment

2009-05-27T05:19:19+00:00

We decided quite suddenly a few days ago that we'll fly to Minnesota for a weel over 4th of July this year. Grandma and Grandpa will be quite pleased to see Christopher, and the weather at the lake should be good for relaxing.

Since we're flying through Newark, we've also decided to spend a weekend in New York City on the way home. Picking a hotel is driving me a little crazy, though, given the high prices and number of choices. Suggestions for a good family hotel are welcome. (And, on another note, can the reviews at tripadvisor.com be trusted?)

Rustic furniture

2009-05-13T10:45:37+00:00

Seeing Diane's report of moving her "super-sized, American-made furniture" from Mannheim to Barcelona reminded me that today was a minor expat milestone for us. Today we got rid of the last remaining bits of American furniture we had brought with us back in 1990. It was a bulky oak dining room set that Germans would politely describe as "rustic". We had tried selling it a few years ago, but found no takers. It's been in the basement since then, and as part of our long-term 2009 basement project it landed on the pile of "Sperrmüll" that was to be picked up today.

(As an aside, how would one refer to "Sperrmüll" pickup in English? My father would call it the "dray service", but that's a quaint 19th century term that's a bit of an inside joke in our family. "Junk pickup" à la Sanford & Son maybe?)

However, the furniture will not end up at the dump. The table was picked up a couple weeks ago by a flea-market collector whom we had called to take a look at our stuff. And the 4 chairs disappeared from the pile on the street yesterday, one day before today's pickup. Sperrmüll moves in mysterious ways.

Politically Active

2009-05-11T17:01:11+00:00

In a moment of weakness after a week of working middle-shifts, Frauke agreed to take Christopher for an outing this past weekend... only after promising the trip did she see where he wanted to go: to a demonstration in Hannover against policy of the current education ministry. That's a cause we can agree with, but taking up an entire Saturday with a bus trip to Hannover? And, yes, Christopher insisted on taking the bus.

I was not in on the promise, having taken the time to read the fine print. I did however bring to two of them to the bus pick-up point at 9:30 Saturday morning. We managed to get Christopher to compromise on taking the bus there, but to take the train back.

And they had a good crowd. 10000 demonstrators (mostly teachers and students) protested plans to impose a shortened Abitur in the "Gesamtschule" (combined schools, like we hope to have built in Jesteburg) and the general lack of funding for education.

Frauke and Christopher skipped out after two hours, eating lunch at McDonald's amd taking the ICE back home. They were back by 4 pm, giving Christopher plenty of time to mow the lawn before dark and letting Frauke relax a little bit on her day off and enjoy an outdoor cook-out by yours truly.

The following day was Mother's Day, and Frauke celebrated by doing something she loves... planting flowers, in this case at her restaurant at Hamburg Winsener Strasse.

East German Nostalgia

2009-05-06T18:16:38+00:00

We just saw a news report about a children's museum exhibit on life in East Germany. I first visited East Berlin in 1981, and a lot has changed since then. The Wall is gone. The Palace of the Republic is gone. The DDR itself is gone. But my souvenir of my first visit remains: an original DDR beer opener, with the stamped Retail Sales Price (Einzelhandelsverkaufspreis = EVP) so you know it's authentic!

It's also still functional... buy me a beer, and I can prove it to you!

For the record, at the time 15 DDR Pfennigs was worth about 3 BRD Pfennigs, or somewhat less than 1 US cent.

Whiney Expat Bloggers Meetup 2009

2009-04-28T05:31:53+00:00

This year's Whiney Expat Bloggers Meetup will be September 5th and 6th in Munich.

Selecting the place and date was about as long and complex as selecting a presidential candidate, but that's just how we Americans are. We're now working on an agenda.

This year we have an online forum at http://www.expatbloggersingermany.com/ to help organize the meetup. Access is password only, but any blogger (does Twitter count? or a GeoCities page?) can apply, and non-bloggers can get read-only access.

Stripes from Paris

2009-04-15T09:10:40+00:00

Nest week we start a new remodelling project... the satellite in Marktkauf Center. The design hasn't changed since it opened nearly 8 years ago:

The designers for McDonald's Europe in Paris have a new series of designs for satellites, and they imagine that our restaurant could look like this:

The transformation will take just 3 days, and the restaurant will remain open throughout construction. The French models photoshopped into the proposed design are not included. :-)

Note that the central M logo is placed on a green background instead of the traditional red. It' part of a new exterior design scheme that's being implemented in Europe. It's a bit hard to get used to after 50 years of red.

Yesterday's News

2009-03-23T20:15:55+00:00

Yesterday morning we attended a rally in support of a new school in Jesteburg. I got recruited as a drummer, we were at the front of the march, and the drummers ended up in full color in the Hamburger Abendblatt. That's me with the white cap and the grim expression on the far left. The story (without photos) is also on the Abendblatt website.

Irish Crab

2009-03-14T18:57:21+00:00

We thought we'd be nice to Christopher and let him decide what he wanted for supper last night. He thought long and hard, about 20 minutes, then told us he wanted his favorite meal, crab legs!

He's had crab several times in the States, most notably at Crabby Bill's in Florida. However, we have no idea where to find crab in Germany. No restaurant we know of serves it. Last night he had to settle for shrimp cocktail and shrimp soup from our local Greek restaurant. However, he did take the time to tell us with pencil and paper what he really wanted.

However, we knew the Metro cash-and-carry store has a huge seafood department, and we promised him we would look there today. And sure enough, while they didn't have any crab legs, they did have a 1-lb whole frozen fully cooked Irish crab.

We've never prepared any type of crab at home, and had no idea how long to thaw it out. Looking on the internet, I found recommendations to let it thaw overnight, but that surely wouldn't do for the impatient Christopher. We left it it cold water for 2 hours, then boiled it for 5 minutes.

We also do not have the proper utensils for eating crab, so yes, that is a garden shears that he used to crack open the legs. He said the crab tasted as good as he remembers from Florida.

We will think twice, though, before we ask him again what he would like for supper.

Spring Break

2009-03-08T07:39:03+00:00

This year we have the luck that our McDonald's spring meeting in Munich coincides with Christopher's Easter vacation at the end of March. So he gets to come along! Christopher also has the luck that Legoland Germany opens that same week.

The meeting ends on Tuesday, and Legoland doesn't open until Saturday, so we have 3 days to explore Munich and surroundings. We know about the Deutsches Museum, and we might take a day trip to the Zugspitze. Are there any other family activities in Munich that can be recommended?

Journalist Christopher

2009-02-18T20:50:53+00:00

While helping (well, actually watching) me clean out our basement, Christopher discovered Frauke's typewriter (which he immediately dubbed an "antique") and asked if he could try it out. This evening we let him at it.

After experimenting a bit, he put in a fresh sheet of paper and spent over an hour preparing a "report" on snakes, with lists of species of snakes, what they eat, what eats them, and where they are found.

Afterwards he declared that, unlike us, he does not need a computer to print things out, he can just do it himself.

School Daze

2009-02-10T05:07:15+00:00

Last week was mid-term vacation for our school, and as a 3rd grader Christopher got his first report card with real grades. His grades were pretty good, we thought. One of the quirks of German family life seems to be that kids are to share their grades or show their report cards to anyone who asks. I remember that my report cards were a private matter between me, my parents and the school.

But even though it seems like he just started school yesterday, it's time to start thinking seriously about what comes next. Elementary school ends after grade 4; at grade 5 the three-tiered German school system kicks in, with the kids divided into higher, middle and lower levels.

We have a number of misgivings about the school system, and while Christopher is doing fine right now, we're not sure he will be well-served by the school system as it now stands. Here are some of my feelings.

I have no experience with the 3-tiered system and don't understand the reasons for it. A big part of American schools is learning social competence, to be able to get along with all of your fellow citizens, and that seems to be missing when the kids are divided up so early. I've heard reports that social background (as opposed to talent or intelligence) plays a bigger role in students' success in Germany than elsewhere, so maybe the division has as much to do with class as with competence.
There is no local control of schools as in the US. Schools are a matter for the individual states (Bundesländer), and any decision regarding schools has to go through the hierarchical bureaucracy, for us from county (Winsen) to the district (Lüneburg) and to the state (Hannover).
This means that education is a state political issue. The CDU tends to prefer the traditional 3-tiered system, the SPD and Greens tend to prefer reforms. School policy, and the school system, will change when new parties take over. Any aspect of the present system may disappear when a new party takes over.
Politicians don't know anything about education, and will make policy changes to achieve their own goals rather than to improve education. For example, in Hamburg the CDU was for the traditional 3-tiered system while the Greens were for a comprehensive system. In their coalition, they compromised to start the 3 tiers at grade 7 instead of grade 5. Most states have now shortened the upper Gymnasium track from 9 to 8 years for cost reasons, but without any plan for adjusting the curriculum so that the same material is being taught in less time.
Education seems to be chronically underfunded. Facilities seem to be run down, and (at least in our state) parents are required to pay for books and materials for the classrooms.
Our community does not have a secondary school of its own. So no matter what level we choose for Christopher, he will have to be bussed to another town. There is an active citizens' group to establish a school here, and while they're at it then a comprehensive school for all levels. They even have a Wordpress-based website at Jesteburger BildungsBlog. They of course have to deal with 3 levels of bureacracy, and it's a slow process. We hope they are successful, but we doubt that anything can be achieved before our decision for Christopher is due.
We live in a rural community, so we don't have a lot of alternatives. There is a church-based school in Buchholz, and a Waldorf school about 15 km away. Going to Hamburg is out of the question.
We are very happy with our elementary school, but we don't hear any good things about the local Gymnasium. They seem to be inflexible educational factories... you'll do fine if you go along and fit the mold, if not you'll fall by the wayside.
I recently heard a report how elementary schools here are somewhat biased against boys, with the lack of male teachers as role models and the emphasis of creative language skills over math skills. I can't say whether that's true, but it seemed to fit Christopher's experience thus far.

What does all this mean for Christopher's education? We don't know yet, but we're looking at alternatives.

Mr. Boombastic

2009-02-09T20:52:16+00:00

This morning, I had to wait a few minutes before I could enter the kitchen. Mama and Christopher were busy lighting and couning tea canndles on the kitchen table. The first time they had 53 instead of 47, but at this stage of life, what do 6 extra candles really matter?

Since I'm not German, I'm not supersticious about celebrating birthdays early, so I went ahead and bought myself a present a couple of weeks ago, a Squeezebox Boom network music player. Note the classy and elegant title currently playing.

Just the thing to ease the chore of assembling Ikea furniture, particularly Malm beds in medium brown. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that is how I spent my Friday, well, last Friday. Here is the finished product, and yes, it sleeps as good as it looks.

And so it goes.

McCredit Card

2009-01-22T18:33:11+00:00

Our bank offers credit cards with personalized photos, so now that we have some decent pictures of our restaurant lobbies, Frauke just had to create her own credit card...

Male and Pale

2009-01-21T18:48:48+00:00

I love reading bloggers like Tim Bray who can make connections between seemingly disconnected fields, in his case tech and politics. Here's how he experienced the inauguration in a hotel lobby in San Jose, where the entire room broke in to applause (it's a short entry, I'm quoting it nearly entirely):

... in Silicon Valley, the entrepreneurs and engineers, while mostly men, are a mixed bag ethnically, and their language is English. But the people who work the reception desks and wash the floors and bring the coffee and provide security, their skins are all black and brown (no whites); they have heavy accents and talk lots of different languages, some I can’t even identify, to each other. It’s been that way long as I can remember. This apparently-fixed class/race background is one of the things that bothers me about the Valley.

I think the applause was maybe a little louder from the (standing) hotel employees than the (sitting) business breakfasters.

Ice Fishing

2009-01-07T12:56:43+00:00

If Christopher were an experienced fisherman, he'd tell the world he caught this crappie on Lac qui Parle Lake last weekend. But he's too honest for that. We didn't get a bite during our short time on the ice, which was cut short on account of an incoming snow storm. This fish was caught by our host the night before. Thanks to my brother's friend Gary and his family for having us out.

The Boy is Nine

2008-12-28T16:04:55+00:00

We spent much of Christopher's ninth birthday taking Frauke to the airport (6 hour round trip) for her flight back to Germany, but being able to pick out his present at the Lego Store and the ice cream cake in the evening seemed to make up for the boring drive.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T20:38:36+00:00

Merry Christmas from cold and snowy Minnesota!

The Dremel: An Essential Tool for the International Traveller

2008-12-22T14:16:29+00:00

Left: Original Travel Adapter with safety tabs (left and right) to prevent use with grounded plugs

Middle: Modified Travel Adapter with safety tabs removed (using a Dremel)

Right: A grounded plug that can now be inserted into the modified adapter

Note: Use of the modified adapter is not recommended with any essential equipment you don't want to see fried. But any equipment you bring on a trip isn't essential anyway.

Snow Chaos

2008-12-20T19:49:24+00:00

According to the Hamburger Abendblatt, the entire United States has been hit with snow chaos. Well, we're flying in on Tuesday, and Christopher is ready! Do you think Grandma will let him play outside dressed like this?

Kittens on a Slide

2008-12-13T09:26:16+00:00

In lieu of actual content, I present Kittens on a Slide, as seen at Andrew Sullivan, and which pretty much describes how I feel about getting work done at the moment.

Auto Blogroll with Google Reader

2008-12-09T03:00:37+00:00

The other day I overheard @AmiExpat and @NewWrldYankee twittering about how annoying it is deal with link requests and keep a blogroll. My solution to that used to be to keep an automatic list of blogs I actually read.

At the time I had a bunch of scripts to do the dirty work (don't bother looking for them, they seem to be gone from SourceForge) that would pull my readling list from Bloglines and output a list for my sidebar.

That was 2004, this is now, and with Google Reader and WordPress you don't have to do any of the dirty work yourself. It's pretty easy these days to list a subset of the blogs you read (keeping your sexblogs secret, of course) on practically any weblog. On WordPress there is even a widget that makes it easier.

In Google Reader you can choose to make one or more of your tags public. Go to your settings page, then under "Folders and Tags" you can choose to "change sharing" for the tags you choose. You then get links for a number of ways to share the articles or blogs that have this tag. Under "add a blogroll to your site" you can get some javascript to copy and paste into your blog template to get a blogroll.
For those of us who use WordPress, copying and pasting is too much work. There is a Google Reader Blogroll Widget that does the dirty work for us. Once you've made the folder public in Google Reader, just activate the the widget, copy in one of the links, and you're good to go. This in effect sets up the same javascript you could copy in by hand.

I generally don't like putting in external scripts on my site, otherwise your site ends up to be a widget hell that takes ages to load and hangs if any of them happen to break. I've had good experience with scripts from Google, though, and face it... if Google is broken, the entire internet is probably broken as well.

So now I've made my "expat" tag public, and anytime I give the tag to a new blog, it gets added to the list. And if for any reason I stop reading a blog, it disappears from the list as well. The one thing it doesn't do automatically is remove dead and outdated links... the deadwood has to be cleaned out by hand.

If you're interested in more of the stuff I read, I've also set up a mega-list of seveal of my tags as a separate page

Last Minute Advent Calendar

2008-12-07T15:04:35+00:00

The season for advent calendars is going fast, and unfortunately we ordered a few too many "McDonald's Adventskalender" (with Lindt chocolate and exclusive coupons good at McDonald's in Dibbersen) to sell at the restaurant. We've started selling two for the price of one... i.e. two for 8.49.

The second Sunday in Advent is of course the perfect time to buy an advent calendar. You can open the first 7 doors all at once, and can still enjoy a daily treat for more than two weeks until Christmas. You get both instant gratification and daily satisfaction. What more could you ask for?

For PapaScott readers I have an exclusive deal. For a limited time, you can buy calenders from me directly and I will donate the entire purchase price to McDonald's Kinderhilfe (the German Ronald McDonald Houses). Postage costs within Germany are 3 for 2 or 4 calendars, 5 for 6 to 10 calendars, or you can pick them up directly. Payment by bank transfer, PayPal, or cash upon pickup.

2 calendars: 8.49 plus 3.00 = 11.49
4 calendars: 16.98 plus 3.00 = 19.98
6 calendars: 25.47 plus 5.00 = 30.47
10 calendars: 42.45 plus 5.00 = 47.45

Remember, the longer you wait, the more chocolate you have to eat the first day. So order today! This piece of history can be yours to keep (at least as long as the chocolate lasts)! Order today, via the comments, Twitter (@papascott) or mail papascott@gmail.com. Supplies are limited!

Swimming in the Adria

2008-12-03T10:50:19+00:00

I wrote the following as a guest post for Yankee In A New World, an American studying in Hungary. Reading her blog reminded me of the one time I visited Hungary and that we haven't seen as much of Eastern Europe as we would like. This is not so much about what we saw as about how we got there, and almost didn't get back...

One thing about becoming a settled expat is that you are not able to be see as much of your new country and continent as you might think. Yes, in Germany we get 6 weeks vacation per year, but most of that is used either to visit friends and family on the old continent or to show visitors from the old continent things you've already seen yourself. My parents saw more of Europe on a 3-week bus tour than I've seen in 18 years living here.

Our only true European adventure was back in 1996. We had just signed
the contract to buy a house, and figured (rightly, as it turned out)
that our time and money would be severely strained for the next couple
of year. If we wanted to take a proper vacation, we had to do it now.
But since we had just put most of our savings into the down payment,
cost was a major issue. So we decided to do a Eastern European camping
trip.

My wife had a business conference in Prague that June, and we used
that as our jumping-off point. She had a decent company car, but
wasn't allowed to drive it the the "New East", so I drove to Prague in
my Renault R5 (similar to a Volkswagen Golf, except French and less
reliable... in fact it died for good a year later). Loaded down with 2
bicycles and a hatch full of camping equipment, I pulled up to the
Prague Hilton and spirited my wife away. Still in her business
clothes, she was brought to our tent at a campground literally on the
wrong side of the tracks. The next few days we were then able to take
a closer look at the sights that she'd had only seen from the tour
bus.

Our next stop was Lake Balaton in Hungary, which wasn't quite what we
imagined (too shallow and muddy). "I want to swim in the blue ocean on
my birthday," said my wife, and pointed to Istria on the map, just a
hop, skip and a jump through Croatia away. The map was, however
deceiving. What looked like 3 hours actually took 10. For one thing I
had to wait over an hour at the border for a Croatian visa (lesson for
spontaneous travel decisions... check visa requirements). In addition,
the road from the border to Zagreb wasn't exactly paved, and the
motorway from Zagreb to the coast wasn't yet exactly complete, so we
spent hours snaking through the hills under half-finished bridges. But
we arrived at a wonderful campground on the coast with hundreds of
spaces, but only 10% occupied since the war had only been over for a
year.

Now that we knew about the bad roads, we decided to return to Hungary
via Slovenia and Austria for our last stop in Budapest. We found a
beautiful campground on a wooded hill overlooking the city. It was
great in the morning to coast with our bikes down to the river. It was
not so much fun evenings to trudge with our bikes uphill.

All in all, bikes are a great way to explore a new city, and we'd
certainly do it again, but without the R5 and without the tent. Last
year we took a bike tour of Barcelona and loved it (except for the
road up the mountain to the Citadel). Between the sights you have the
chance to see the city from street level and get a feel for its pulse.

But even today I shudder to think... what if our R5 had broken down on
that dirt road in Croatia. Would we have gotten anywhere with our
German auto club card?

Breakfast Awards

2008-12-02T18:57:31+00:00

To push the launch of the new breakfast, our McDonald's North German region held a contest over the past 2 months for all 225 restaurants in northern Germany. Cash awards were given in three categories

* Top 10 stores with the best breakfast sales increase
* Top 3 stores with the best breakfast marketing (as determined by an independent jury)
* Top 10 stores with the best McCafé sales increase (just to keep everyone on their toes)

Our restaurant in Dibbersen was able to present itself quite well. Out of the 225 restaurants...

* we placed 3rd in breakfast sales increase with 47.9%
* we placed 2nd in the marketing contest
* we placed in the top 20% (but not in the top 10) in McCafé sales increase
* we were the only restaurant to place in the money in more than one contest and are therefore number one in cash and prizes (just like we won the jackpot at Wheel of Fortune... thank you, Vanna!)

The prize money will of course be paid out in full as bonus to our management and crew. We'll pay all payroll taxes, they'll receive the prize money as net pay... not that we are complaining. We thank them all and we are very proud of what they have accomplished.

Rant

2008-12-01T16:16:34+00:00

The first rule of cash security is "you don't talk about cash security". But starting today we're having an armored car pick up our receipts, since with multiple locations it makes no sense to deposit cash ourselves. Now I can finally say what I hate most about my job.

I HATE MAKING BANK DEPOSITS!!! IT TAKES AN HOUR FROM MY LIFE EVERY DAY!!!!

But not any more. Thank you very much.

The Iceman Cometh

2008-11-22T19:29:54+00:00

The Barking/Braying/Meowing/Crowing Manhole Cover in Bremen

2008-11-18T19:51:28+00:00

Since the Expat Meetup in Bremen we know the number one tourist attraction, so when Christopher and I were in town for business at the US Consulate, we made sure to stop by.

Unfortunately we weren't able to renew Christopher's passport as planned. The US State Department has tightened the rules on parental consent, and both parents must sign the application in person. A notarized consent form is no longer accepted unless it is physically impossible for the parent to appear. "In prison" was the example we were given. "Being a busy businesswoman" doesn't cut it. Luckily Christopher has a understanding if busy mother, so Christopher's application will have the missing signature within a few days.

The information on germany.usembassy.gov is somewhat confusing on this point, but now that I've given my constructive feedback, I'm sure they'll get the details fixed soon. :-)

Paper Chase

2008-11-15T09:56:26+00:00

When we decided to form a separate firm for our two new restaurants in Harburg, we had assumed that forming a KG (limited partnership) would be easier and faster than forming the GmbH (limited liability corporation) we set up last year. So far it hasn't been the case. Coordinating the paperwork between us, McDonald's, the attorney, the tax accountant, the chamber of commerce (Handelskammer), and the commercial register (Handelsregister) has so far been just as complicated if not worse, and we haven't even started with the last two yet. Last year the GmbH was not officially registered until two weeks after we started business. Legally, we were running on a hope and a prayer for 14 days.

This time we've run into technical snafus.

The first draft of the KG contract was sent to us via email. The sender had never corresponded with us before, and Gmail thus classified the attachment full of legal language as spam. We discovered the mail 4 days later.
Trying to fax the contract for approval, the recipient didn't answer. After a few trys, and checking that the number was correct, we called the office. The fax machine had been disconnected. "Oh, that's why we haven't gotten any faxes this week."
Corrections to the contract were faxed to our private voice number, which we've never given out for business, and without caller ID so we had no idea who was trying to fax. After three tries, I guessed that it must be something important... I forwarded the voice line to the fax number and hoped that they would try a fourth time. They did.

Somehow it's reassuring that the technical glitches of the last century can still occur in this one. And, as I asked on Twitter yesterday, if anyone knows of a good service to forward received faxes to a mail or web server, please let me know.

Army of Stamps

2008-11-12T13:05:22+00:00

The rubber stamps have arrived for our firm, so we can start doing business!

Expansion

2008-11-11T20:48:23+00:00

Our business is expanding! On January 1, we'll be purchasing two additional McDonald's restaurants in Hamburg-Harburg: a free-standing McDrive with McCafé on the Winsener Strasse 231, and a satellite restaurant in the Marktkauf Center, Seeveplatz 1.

Winsener Strasse is the closest restaurant to our original store in Dibbersen, and is nearly a twin. It was built just a few months earlier, has the same basic layout, and like Dibbersen was just remodeled with McCafé and Gym & Fun. It has also an additional challenge... a Burger King is situated right next door.

The Marktkauf Center satellite is a limited-menu shopping center restaurant with limited seating in downtown Harburg. There are two other McDonald's satellites within walking distance (Phoenix Center and the Harburg Arcaden), so we'll have to concentrate on the guests in our shopping center and giving them the best experience possible.

We've set up a separate firm, the Petersen-Hanson Familienrestaurants KG, to run the two restaurants in Harburg. We've also reserved the domain mcdonalds-harburg.de, which for now redirects to our existing website.

We were offered the restaurants at the end of September, just before the Expat Meetup in Bremen. So if my fellow expats are wondering why I was somewhat reserved at the Meetup, you now know why (although I'm not all that extroverted to begin with).

The changes for our day-to-day routine will likely be as big as when we bought the first restaurant in Dibbersen, as we'll have to shift our efforts from managing a single restaurant to supervising three. On my side, I expect the administration to at least quadruple, since we'll not only have three times the paperwork, but will have take the time to decide how it all should be allocated.

An immediate consequence is that our Christmas trip to the States will be cut short, at least for Frauke. We'll fly in together on the 23rd, but she'll fly home on the 27th to complete the takeover, while Christopher and I will be staying in Minnesota for another week. We'll be together with my parents for the two most important holidays of the year, Christmas and Christopher's birthday, and as long as we can round up a Christmas goose for the annual goose leg dinner, we can manage the few days apart.

Yes We Can in 2036

2008-11-05T18:32:35+00:00

Christopher followed the US election campaign quite closely, and was a staunch supporter of Obama. He kept informed with the children's news program Logo on KiKa and made sure he didn't miss any US news when they showed up on the adult news programs. He told us to wake him up this morning with the result was know, and we all three watched Obama's victory speech at 6am German time.

Christopher is especially fascinated by Obama's heritage. He is aware of race is the naive way we wish children would never outgrow. Brown skin is just fine with him, since his best friend Ergin in kindergarten was Turkish and also had brown skin. The past couple of weeks we've had a mixture of brown and white eggs in our refrigerator. Christopher dubbed them Obama eggs and McCain eggs, and made sure we ate the McCain eggs first. Our egg tray is now 100% for Obama.

Christopher is also aware of Obama's mixed parentage, an American and a non-American, and that this is a trait the two share. For now anyway, Christopher wants to follow in Obama's footsteps. His career goal of the moment is to become President of the United States, and as a natural born US citizen, he meets the basic qualification. His previous career goal was Chief Designer for LEGO Group in Denmark, and maybe he will find a way to combine the two goals.

If I Had A Pony

2008-10-29T06:34:24+00:00

I'm pretty amused by things like the Global Electoral College at the Economist, which polls people people around the world asking how they would vote in the US election. Of course the results are gong to look like this map from lumma.de. It's like asking little kids what they would do if they had a pony... the answers may be cute but not particularly useful.

I suspect the truth is actually closer to this interview with Robert Kagen (from Rainy Day);

SPIEGEL: An overwhelming majority of Europeans want to see Barack Obama become president...

KAGAN: Yes, of the United States, although they would never elect someone like that in their own countries.

PapaScott for Obama

2008-10-28T19:04:45+00:00

I haven't blogged much about this year's presidential campaign. But I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.

I've just donated one month's advertising proceeds from PapaScott to the Obama campaign. My Text Link Ads are fully booked, so it's not an insignificant amount.

However, it's not as significant as a single vote. If you are eligible to vote in this election, please do so.

Easy Morning in Words and Pictures

2008-10-22T05:22:04+00:00

We finally have a list of our new breakfast products online (also as PDF), for those of you that can't make it to our restaurant and have been wondering what all the fuss is about. The text and pictures are from the menu cards we've had on the tables since September,

Since the new breakfast for now is only available in northern Germany, the national McDonald's website doesn't mention any of the new products yet (although they do have a press release). We usually link to them for product information, but this time we had to rely on ourselves (and my graphic "talent" in cutting and pasting from a PDF).

Harz Highlights 1

2008-10-19T20:43:06+00:00

Christopher has school vacation, and we took a few days off and spent four nights in the Harz, the German mountain range between Niedersachsen and Sachsen-Anhalt. It's popular for short trips, but doesn't seem to be as well known for foreign tourists.

Our first highlight was taking the HSB narrow-guage steam engine train to the top of the Brocken, the highest mountain in the Harz.

Legend has is that the Brocken was a meeting place for witches, and more recently it was a closed military installation during DDR days. Today it's again open to the public, and the witches are used to market every little hotel, shop and restaurant in the region.

Once on the Brocken, Christopher had the chance to fly around the mountain on a witch's broomstick!

Alas, as with most magic is was only smoke and mirrors, or in this case a video camera with a blue-screen background. In fact, the weather was foggy and just above freezing during our visit. We couldn't even see the TV tower from right below it, much less any view from the mountain.

Being cheap and mean parents, we only bought one-way train tickets, thus forcing Christopher to hike with us 7 km down the mountain back to our car. Strangely enough, Christopher found the flat portions of the trail boring and exhausting, but thought it was great fun to crawl over boulders on the middle portion of the trail. We'll remember to take him only on difficult trails in the future.

Easy Morning for Free Update

2008-10-15T10:09:38+00:00

Just a note that our Easy Morning for Free was a huge success, and we have the newspaper article scanned in at our restaurant homepage (or click on the picture for a pdf). Now for a couple days of R and R!

Easy Morning for Free

2008-10-11T07:14:38+00:00

Next Tuesday, in a promotion in the "so crazy it has to work" category, we hope to give away 1000 McMuffins between 6:00 and 10:30 am in a promotion we call Easy Morning for Free. The daily HAN newspaper in Hamburg-Harburg will be printing a coupon on page 1 of their Monday edition that is good for a McMuffin Bacon & Egg and a coffee, which we usually sell for 1.99€. Here's the teaser report from last Thursday, (also as pdf).

This is part of a series of free promotions in the HAN, and their readers have lined up in the past for free car washes, cheese from the farmers' market, or cake at a café. The top number so far was 1000 coupons, and we'd love to match that, although there are a couple of limiting factors for us (breakfast ends at 10:30, we're not reachable by public transit, and we certainly don't have 1000 parking places). But even if we "only" give away 300 McMuffins, that's still more than double our usual breakfast guest count.

The idea, of course, is to promote our new breakfast offerings which made their debut in northern Germany on September 9 (and coming to the rest of Germany in the coming months). I'll write more about how breakfast is working for us later.

Vintage Expats

2008-10-02T15:34:55+00:00

Last weekend I was finally able to attend the annual Whiny Expat Blogger Meetup, organized the past 4 years by J. Good thing, since when we were voting on the location it was my idea to stuff the ballot box for Bremen so we'd finally have a northern location. So while most folks had to travel for hours to arrive, I could just hop on the Metronom for a 45 minute train trip.

Claire organized the details in Bremen and did a wonderful job, even preparing little welcome kits for us all. She herded our group of 25 (including strollers) through the city, parked us on the Weser riverbank to enjoy the sun for lunch, and reserved excellent places for dinner and for Sunday brunch. She didn't plan the excursion to the back room of a gay bar Saturday night, that just happened.

Our foreign experience ranged from brand-new to old-hat, so we had people all along the 5 stages of being an expat. We old-timers couldn't promise the newcomers that things would get better with time, but we could reassure them that they would eventually get used to it (final stage: acceptance).

I'm horrible at names, so I won't try to mention everyone I met, and I know I didn't get the chance to talk to everyone. I will mention Adam and Mausi, both of whom I've read for ages and I was finally able to meet. Most people seem to be shy about their names, so I'll just say it was nice meeting you all, and I've added your blogs to my feed reader. And I hope to see you all next time, be it in Berlin or Regensburg, or wherever.

Oslo Cruise

2008-09-08T11:08:28+00:00

Noone solved the riddle of our weekend destination in my last post. Indeed, noone even seemed to recognize that it was a riddle. Frauke, Christopher and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in a suite on the MS Color Fantasy, a ferry that shuttles between Kiel and Oslo.

It was similar to the trip we took a year ago last spring, except then we departed from Copenhagen with the Danish DFDS, and this time from Kiel with the Norwegian Color Line. We left Friday afternoon, arrived in Oslo Saturday morning for a quick 4 hour stay, just enough time for the Fram museum, the Holmenkollen ski jump, and the Vigeland Park).

We arrived back in Kiel Sunday morning. We waited a couple of hours before heading home as all roads to Lüllau were closed for the Cyclassics race. We went to the beach at Laboe, checked out the WWII U-Boat and checked out the Marine Biology Station, a small Baltic aquarium and learning center we can highly recommend.

We then arrived home to find our door blocked with flowers. I guess that was the revenge for us leaving the country without telling our employees where we were going. :-)

A personal note for my family... aboard the Fram we noticed a framed copy of the Christmas menu from 1893. Our Norwegian is not very good, but it was good enough to recognize that there is no lutefisk! The museum did have a number of empty aquavit bottles from the ship, though.

Moment of Silence

2008-09-05T07:55:32+00:00

In commemoration of the events that occurred 25 years ago tomorrow (for which all photographic evidence seems to have disappeared, much to the chagrin of the participants), the weblog PapaScott will remain silent today and for the weekend. All three members of the Petersen-Hanson family are away observing the anniversary "in the near abroad, within our traditional sphere of influence", as Vladimir Putin would probably say. One could also say that they have disappeared from the face of the earth for a couple of days, but will return home on Sunday evening to fulfill their respective obligations. We kindly request your understanding and respect.

We hereby submit the following documentation. Click to enlarge.

Right of Way

2008-08-29T12:19:48+00:00

Even after 18 years of driving in Germany, I still have problems following my instincts with right of way at intersections.

The German rule is Rechts vor Links, or right before left. That's the same as I learned in driver's training in Minnesota. In the words of the Minnesota Driver's Manual:

When two vehicles reach an intersection at the same time, and there is no traffic light or signal, the driver of the vehicle on the left must yield to the vehicle on the right.

So far, so good. But at T-intersections, a different rule applies:

When two vehicles approach an uncontrolled “T” intersection, the driver of the vehicle that is turning must yield to all cross traffic.

In other words, straight before turns. In Germany this doesn't apply. "Right before left" applies to both T- and regular intersections. When a cowpath adjoins a highway, traffic from the highway must yield to traffic from the right on the cowpath unless right-of-way is posted on the highway with a Vorfahrtstraße sign. Ninety percent of T-intersections have such a sign.

It's at the T-intersections that aren't posted where I have problems. I consciously think "This is a T-intersection, I can't follow my instincts", and I end up yielding to everybody.

This drives my wife nuts, but I suspect that if it's gone on this long, I'll never outgrow it.

Passport Renewal

2008-08-27T18:21:40+00:00

It's now been six years since we submitted the application, took the pictures, and obtained Christopher's US passport. That means the passport expired nearly a year ago, and it's time to apply for a new one before we visit the States this Christmas.

I found the rules online, and have the forms completed and the documents gathered. Two things have changed since last time. For one, the consulate in Hamburg no longer processes passports, so we have to go to either Berlin or Bremen. Secondly, if both parents don't appear in person, the written consent of the missing parent must be notarized. I don't want to trouble Frauke to come along, but I have no idea what they need for a notary (it's not the same as a German Notar). (The consulate will notarize her consent for free, but that kind of defeats the purpose of saving Frauke the trip.)

Of course Christopher has school now every day, and the passport office is only open during the week, so it looks like the three of us will be taking a road trip to Bremen one day during fall school vacation in October.

Back from the Beach

2008-08-20T15:40:46+00:00

We've just returned from a couple of days at St. Peter-Ording on the North Sea. Details later.

Call Me A Fool

2008-07-30T04:43:51+00:00

German Joys (responding to the Spiegel article last week on Beta Bloggers) on why Germans are such poor bloggers. Point 1:

1. A national culture of modesty that frowns upon too much self-expression. Americans have the advantage here. They're hardly afraid of looking like fools, and like to talk about themselves.

Herr Lumma will be interested in point 4:

4. Germany's hierarchical, party-driven, elite-dominated political structure doesn't foster the belief that ordinary citizens can meaningfully change government policies ... there is no critical mass of people who consider the Internet a tool for positive political mobilization (rather than ranting), [thus] there is no real incentive to try to form mass movements or raise large amounts of money on-line

As for me, I'll try to take point 1 more to heart and play the fool here more often.

Do I Miss The Tech Stuff?

2008-07-18T10:40:40+00:00

While chatting via email with Shelley, one of my favorite bloggers, she asked first about the business and then about me...

"Do you ever miss the tech stuff?"

Well, um, yes, er, sometimes, oh, maybe... I do miss being an expert. I was very good at managing networks, and was very good explaining and using my expertise with others. I understand maybe 30% (at best) of the restaurant business, and defer most of the time to Frauke's experience and the experience of those in our team.

I don't miss the conflicting expectations of those who design, sell and market tech applications and those who implement them. I spent a lot of my time playing HAL in 2001 ("I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"), or at least explaining that things were a lot more difficult to implement than they seemed.

I do find the social aspects of helping to run a business much more fulfilling than anything I did in tech. Not that selling hamburgers is a social ideal (but then, neither was selling journals, banking systems, cars, or a dating service, like my various tech employers). But working with and getting to know 70 employees, and maybe helping some of them work out their problems or achieve more of their potential, whether by moving up with us or moving out to something better, that's extremely gratifying.

But you can't say that I'm completely out of tech. I do get to enter a lot of data in Excel. :-)

Beach Party

2008-07-14T19:28:18+00:00

Christopher and Frauke at the beach in Cuxhaven. No Viking battles were fought, and while the sun shone seldom, it did shine.

Viking Camp

2008-07-11T06:42:39+00:00

This weekend we'll be away in Cuxhaven for our annual camping trip with Christopher's uncles and cousins. We refer to it as Viking Camp, since the weather for our trips is always so frigid that only a Viking could feel at home. Well, at least one time it was. It looks like this time it will only be wet. We'll be back Sunday evening to wring ourselves out.

Flags

2008-06-25T18:19:37+00:00

Christopher is ready for tonight's game.

FPH in the HAN

2008-06-19T12:49:17+00:00

A couple of weeks ago Frauke spoke at a business round table on franchising sponsored by the Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft (business promotion council) for our region. The Harburger Anzeigen und Nachrichten published article on her presentation (scanned PDF, in German) in their business section, complete with a photo of our McCafé Ford Ka.

Placeholder

2008-06-18T10:07:50+00:00

The last thing I expected when we went to a McDonald's meeting the past two days was to be berated for not updating my blog for over a week. But that's what happened, at the bar after the disappointing German game against Austria at Euro 2008.

So for the McDonald's insiders who follow our restaurant via PapaScott... we just got our second ISC for the month, and while the TET was a bit high (so no perfect score), we have a zero CSO for the fourth month in a row.

Euro 2008 Flag Count

2008-06-06T19:55:05+00:00

Driving in Harburg this afternoon, one day before the start of Euro 2008, here are the numbers of car-flags I noticed (German flags excluded):

* POR 3
* ITA 2
* POL 2
* GRE 1
* STP 1 (St. Pauli pirate flag)

(I was going to twitter this, but Twitter is down, and this is too important not to post. :-)

Uncle Tom in the 21st Century

2008-06-05T20:15:05+00:00

So is the Tageszeitung's "Uncle Barack's Cabin" headline today stupidly racist, or just racist? "Uncle Tom" has been an insult for, what, a century and a half now?

Spiegel Online International: German Newspaper Slammed for Racist Cover
Davos Newbies: Tin Ears
Davids Medienkritik: Die Tageszeitung: "Uncle Barack's Cabin"

Update: An opposing view (in German) from Markus Tripp (who I follow on Twitter), who links to the discussion at tazblog, the newspaper's own blog.

Poor Reception

2008-05-28T05:35:00+00:00

Frauke has the sometimes annoying characteristic of using her accelerator as a stress-relief device. If, for whatever reason, she become angry or frustrated while driving, she steps on the accelerator and drives faster. In certain situations this can be counter-productive, for example, when she's having trouble finding her destination. She can't find the place she's looking for, she gets mad, steps on the gas, and drives right on past.

When this happens, I've learned through experience that it's best not to say anything, since in these situations Frauke is not very receptive to suggestions.

I was rudely reminded this morning of the relationship between receptiveness and technology this morning at 4 am. Our security company called and spoke on the answering machine, which is integrated in our telephone. Frauke wanted to return the call, but in her just-awakened-state was unable to locate the number in the phone, and called for me to find it for her (as if my just-awakened-state would be any clearer).

Our Siemens phone stores incoming numbers in various places, depending on whether the call was taken, missed, or a message was left. In this case, to get the number one has to first listen to the message. Since Frauke wasn't interested in the message, only the number, she was unable to find it in her 4 am state of mind.

Now if the call had come in on her iPhone, she would have had a much easier time finding the number. The iPhone interface is better for poor reception.

An Honor Killing in Hamburg

2008-05-23T12:00:41+00:00

Spiegel Online International: Afghan Girl's Death Sparks National Debate. This is the story of a 16-year-old girl in Hamburg stabbed to death by her older brother. One of our best employees in Dibbersen is related to the family and attended the funeral. He told us the family has been very hurt by how the media has protrayed them the past week. As you read the story, try to find the line between the truth and trying to fit the story into a pre-set "Muslims in Germany" mold.

Takeover Battle for Enodis

2008-05-19T11:17:57+00:00

It may not be as big as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo!, but for us it's interesting to watch the bidding war between the restaurant equipment companies Manitowoc and Illinois Tool Works for Enodis. (Today Manitowok increased it's offer to $2.1 billion). All three are big suppliers to McDonald's,

In our kitchen, the biggest pieces of equipment are Garland grills and Frymaster fryers. Both come from divisions of Enodis. In fact, we're looking at investing in a new energy-efficient low-oil-volume fryer from Frymaster this year (right now the low dollar makes the price attractive). Our beverage system, on the other hand, comes from the Multiplex division of Manitowok.

The result of the bidding war will not of course affect our investment decision. And we don't know whether the consolidation will result in more efficiency with lower prices or higher prices due to reduced competition. We just need to increase our fryer capacity.

Signs on the Autobahn

2008-05-17T05:14:42+00:00

This week we installed signs on the Autobahn A1 a couple of km on either side of the Dibbersen exit. So whether you are coming from Bremen or from Hamburg and you didn't know about our McDonald's in Dibbersen, you will now.

German restrictions on such signs are very strict, so compared to what you see on American interstates, the signs are small, low to the ground, and set quite far from the highway. They also are not cheap; we need a dozen additional guests each day for the signs to be worth the cost. If the past couple of days are any indication, the signs seem to be working, although business could also be up as a result of the cooler weather and the Euro promotion that just started (mmmm, mini-schnitzels).

It's very difficult to take a picture of a small sign from a moving car, so for now I have to settle for showing the digital proof.

Coming Soon to a Carport Near Us

2008-05-15T10:57:33+00:00

Frauke's always wanted a red car: Volkswagen Tiguan 2.0 TDI 125 kW Track & Field.

Frauke and the iPhone

2008-05-06T08:33:14+00:00

About a month ago I bought myself an iPhone. Nothing really special about that (except that T-Mobile dropped their prices 2 days after I ordered), and I never talked about it here (although I did mention it on Twitter a few times). And I love it. Nothing special about that either.

But the moment Frauke saw it, she became insanely jealous. That is unusual. Frauke is pragmatic when it comes to technology. She's not attracted to bright shiny objects like many of us. She holds all my Apple equipment in disdain... at least she did until she saw the iPhone.

"I can use this, there's nothing new to learn. I want one."

In her corporate life Frauke was a happy Blackberry user. For a small business, however, a Blackberry mail server is not worth the bother, and with a normal IMAP or POP account you lose all the sync benefits. We decided to put our mail domain on Google. Frauke got an MDA Vario II smartphone, but she never really used it for mail. Other than contacts and calendar, she never used any of the "smart" features.

Coincidentally, a couple of days after she saw my iPhone her MDA hat a close encounter with the edge of the dress table in the restaurant kitchen. It's an occupational hazard. Frauke has bruises on her hip more often than not. This time her smartphone took the impact.

She didn't even wait for a repair estimate. We bought out the remaining 17 months on her MDA contract and ordered her iPhone. With the reduced price plus the penalty, she paid about the same as the old price I paid a month ago. Last week (after some aggravation with T-Mobile's activation server) we synced the calendar and contacts from Outlook (useless as a mail client but nice for storing sync data) and away she went.

She had no problems learning to use the on-screen keyboard. Her only complaint is with the spell checker, but I think that's aggravating for everyone at first. It's the first cell phone she's been able to use right away.

After seeing some blog entries (e.g. vowe or Daring Fireball) about iPhone making inroads among business users, I thought I'd report that at least this business user is happy with hers.

Open All Night... Almost

2008-05-03T08:44:29+00:00

As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, starting in May we are keeping the drive-thru open 24 hours on weekends. It's now the first weekend in May, so last night was our first all-nighter. But we had a problem.

Our equipment is connected to an electricity management system, where our opening hours are programmed and the largest pieces of equipment are turned on and off automatically. We had changed the weekend hours from "7 to 4" to "7 to 7", but didn't notice that the change wasn't accepted. So come 4:00 this morning, first the roof lights were shut down, then the grills. Can't sell a whole lot at night if the store is dark and you can't cook any burgers.

Checking the manual this morning, we saw that for continuous operation the times have to be entered as midnight to midnight (which to an old sys admin sounds something like the intervals in Nagios). So we're confident that this evening we'll truly be open all night. fully lit and with a full selection of products available.

Sprayed Again

2008-04-23T10:24:01+00:00

Our directional sign in Buchholz, which was vandalized last month and was just replaced last week, was spray painted again Monday evening. This time it was covered more thoroughly and as a bonus included an obscenity in English. I would say someone in our area has some serious brand trust issues with us, to put it in marketing terms.

The signs are rented and insured against vandalism, so such actions don't cost us any money, but they're a pain to deal with nonetheless.

US Airways through Charlotte

2008-04-20T13:14:39+00:00

For our flight to Orlando this week, we looked more at price than comfort. Direct flights to Orlando were full for the dates we wanted, so we ended up choosing US Airways in coach from Frankfurt with a stop at their hub in Charlotte.

I've heard that US Airways has been having service problems since their merger with America West, so we weren't expecting any luxury. We weren't disappointed. The seats were tight on legroom, and there were charges for headsets and alcoholic beverages. Most annoying, however, was the check-in system, which separate our seats on 3 of the 6 legs, despite having reserved seats together. We weren't able to check-in online (because the Hamburg-Frankfurt leg was on a partner carrier), so we were at the mercy of the airport attendants. We were able to trade seats in the plane to sit together, but it's still a pain. Our colleagues in business class, however, were happy with their flight.

In contrast, our experience changing planes in Charlotte was wonderful. Customs and immigration was quick and efficient, luggage transfer was easy, walking distances from gate to gate were short, and the airport was comfortable for waiting, even when our Orlando flight was delayed for 2 hours, with plenty of shops and bars to pass the time. The central throughway is outfitted with wooden rocking chairs, for a Southern front-porch feeling which we thought was cute.

Coming back, we were slightly late coming into Frankfurt and had only 45 minutes connection times. We ran from Gate C to Gate A and just made it... our luggage, however, did not, and was delivered to our home by taxi that evening. But you need to plan at least an hour for any transfer at Frankfurt, or longer if changing terminals and not just gate areas.

All in all, if flying to the States with a change of planes, we advise planning the change in a smaller airport like Charlotte, and avoiding huge hubs like LaGuardia or O'Hare. Too bad the only airline flying to Charlotte is US Airways.

Convention Postcard

2008-04-19T14:12:58+00:00

We spent the past week at the McDonald's Worldwide Convention in Orlando, and we able to send a video postcard to prove we were there.

Open All Night

2008-04-08T16:04:25+00:00

Staying open 24 hours is an idea we briefly considered but then rejected... the night traffic at our restaurant is just too light. So we close the drive-thru at 1 during the week and at 4 on weekends. But now our restaurant manager has convinced us that on weekends the potential is there, and presented us with a staffing concept to stay open all night Friday and Saturday with no additional labor costs. So we're going for it! Starting the first weekend in May, our drive-thru will stay open all night on Friday and Saturday. Even if we only break even, the advertising potential will be worth the effort

Black and White

2008-04-08T06:15:43+00:00

We haven't made any progress on the house pet front, but the ongoing negotiations are encouraging. We do have some further details on why Christopher is insisting on a dalmatian.

>Mama: What about a beagle. They're cute and have such floppy ears.

>Christopher: But beagles are brown. I want a dalmatian that's black and white. Black and white are my favorite colors.

>Mama: Why is that?

>Christopher: Black is in the German flag and white is in the American flag. So a dalmatian is German and American, just like me.

Can't argue with that logic.

Addition to the Family

2008-03-30T13:31:33+00:00

At 8 years old, Christopher is now the perfect age to have a pet to keep him ~~out of our hair~~ occupied. For the past few months he's been talking about a snake, which has been gently but firmly vetoed by Mama.

We've had cats in the past, but our last cat had a little bit too much hunting instinct for Christopher's taste and he has no interest in a new one.

Now Christopher is talking about a dog. That would win over the Mama vote, and I have fond memories of the dog I had as a child. We have enough room and open space for a dog, and our nearby business means we're almost always home. Our wooden parquet floor is already all scratched all to hell, dog claws won't make it any worse. I'm slightly allergic to dogs, but that shouldn't be a problem. My experience has a child showed that the best cure is constant exposure.

Now Christopher isn't talking about just any dog, he wants a Dalmatian. Why? "They're so cute, and black and white are my favorite colors!" (N.B. Check if Christopher has inherited my color blindness.) It's worth considering, but we need to decide whether the size, energy and personality of a Dalmatian would fit into our family, or whether a mixed-breed dog from the local shelter would be better for us. That's going to take some time, and we're not going to rush into a decision. We'll visit some animal shelters and some breeders together with Christopher, and do a lot of talking about the responsibility for all us of bringing a dog into the family.

(PS This post is also a test whether MarsEdit works with the new Wordpress 2.5. Seems to work!)

Mixtape

2008-03-28T06:54:34+00:00

Mixwit (as seen at TechCrunch and Gigold) is a fun little toy to create virtual mixtapes for free (by searching for mp3 files on Seeqpod). You can also decorate a widget cassette tape where the wheels spin when the music plays. Cute.

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I tried to remember songs I was listening to in 1979, between my junior and senior years in high school, although after 29 years my memory has surely gone bad. It's the mood that counts.

Finally

2008-03-26T10:48:49+00:00

We must be the last place in Germany to get any snow that stays on the ground, but for 90 minutes this morning Christopher could finally roll in the snow for the first time this ~~winter~~ spring. Then the snow was gone.

Ship Ahoy

2008-03-24T11:05:34+00:00

The Playmobil Camouflage Pirate Ship is preparing for its maiden voyage in the bathtub!

Twins Ad with Pat Neshek

2008-03-18T13:46:04+00:00

Twins pitcher and Minnesota native Pat Neshek has been keeping a weblog since he was in the minors. It's now spring training and Pat will be starting his second full year in the major leagues. The Twins now figure that Pat is well known enough to star in his own TV ad for the team. Well, maybe he's not as well known as they thought...

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Pat himself blogged about the spot (but click fast, his hoster hasn't implemented permalinks), and if you're not from Minnesota you might need to Google to get the bit about the sideburns. All of the Twins TV ads are pretty good... the best one was last year with the Johan Santana/Joe Nathan carpool.

Stroke of Insight

2008-03-15T16:05:19+00:00

Vowe recommended watching the video Stroke of Insight and it was a very fascinating 19 minutes.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

One-Armed Bandit

2008-03-11T15:55:25+00:00

Frauke had surgery on her right hand last week for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Her arm had been bothering her for a couple of months, with numbness and pins-and-needles feeling at night. After some unsuccessful local treatments, our orthopedist sent her to a neurologist who confirmed that the median nerve was indeed being pinched and that surgery would be the best option.

Our orthopedist also performed the surgery, and she's been back 3 times already for follow-up. Her right hand is still in a splint, but she was back at work the afternoon on the surgery. She says she can make a lot on add-on sales in McCafé based on sympathy. She can't drive her Touran because of the manual transmission, but has traded cars with an employee so she remains mobile.

Her hand is doing fine and is recovering on schedule. Her frustration with having to do everything left-handed is what one would expect, and we're confident that her disposition will also recover on schedule.

Vandalism

2008-03-10T13:58:32+00:00

Remember the directional sign we had made to motivate us on our way to work? This is how it looked this morning:

We also have 5 smaller signs directing drivers to our restaurant. All of them were similarly defaced, so this was no random act of vandalism. Yes, the signs are insured, but a lot of time and energy is wasted to report to the police, file an insurance claim, and arrange for repair or replacement.

She Doesn't Fly Anymore

2008-03-03T21:55:47+00:00

In her managerial career I bet Frauke flew over a hundred times to Munich and back, and experienced many rough landings. But nothing like this Lufthansa flight from Munich landing in Hamburg this past weekend, yet another reason to be thankful she now stays close to home. (Via Cem and Volker)

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We Need The Eggs

2008-03-01T16:28:43+00:00

My Text Link Ads are booked out again, so I guess the reports that changes in Google had killed such advertising were greatly exaggerated. PayPal has already sent a notice that my balance is too high for personal use.

Earning money from ads on PapaScott reminds me of the Woody Allen joke about his brother who thought he was a chicken. "Yes, we know we should take him to a psychiatrist, but we need the eggs."

Laryngitis

2008-02-25T08:48:59+00:00

Sorry I've so quiet here lately, it seems I've lost my voice. We've both been on the floor running shifts at work (one shift leader sick, another on holiday) and we've been doing what McDonald's insiders affectionately refer to as "running labor", i.e. running slightly understaffed to make up for previous shifts that were overstaffed in order to meet a goal for labor costs. It's kind of like sticking your feet in the oven when you're head is cold so that your average temperature is OK.

Actually, I think the expression is "sticking your head in the oven when your feet are cold", but that made me think of Sylvia Plath, and such a dire impression is not the one what I wanted to make.

Whatever creative outbursts I've had have easily fit into the 140 character limit at Twitter. I'll try harder to be more creative in the future.

Pinko Commies

2008-02-17T21:59:02+00:00

Card-carrying Communists infiltrating the inner circle of government... sounds like an accusation of the McCarthy era. But the headline comes from 2008 Germany, and the Communist in question resides in our neighbor community of Buchholz.

The Left Party was able to enter the state parliament in Niedersachsen election last month with 7% of the vote. Among their newly elected candidates is Christel Wegner from Buchholz, a member of the German Communist Party (DKP). Last week she gave a television interview in which she defended the East German Stasi (as useful against "reactionary forces") and claimed the Berlin Wall was built to keep West Germans out of East Germany.

The Left Party is the successor (once removed) of East German SED, but says it has "learned from history" and is trying to distance itself from Ms. Wegner, especially since the negative publicity could hurt their chances in the Hamburg election next weekend.

Maybe the Left Party should make sure that the candidates they field have learned from history as well. By the way, their list for Hamburg also includes DKP members.

Update 18 Feb 2008 Today the Left Party parliamentary faction in Niedersachsen voted to expel Christel from their ranks, and the national Left Party will consider a measure to no longer list "crossover" candidates from other leftist parties. Christel remains a faction-less member of the state parliament.

Indy Dance

2008-02-17T10:37:18+00:00

We're trying out a webcam capture program. Christopher just happened to be playing Indiana Jones...

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Link: sevenload.com

Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T21:08:07+00:00

The rest of the world may be celebrating Valentine's Day today, but we're so busy with the business (German joke: "Selbstständig bedeutet immer selbst und ständig") we don't really have time. But considering that we've been together since sometime around Valentine's Day in 1980 (that's so long ago, that Jimmy Carter was President and Helmut Schmidt was Chancellor), a 20 year franchise contract pales in comparison.

Actually we first met the November before, but the male half was too dense to notice that it could become anything permanent.

Forty-Six, and One

2008-02-09T11:16:55+00:00

Happy Birthday to Me! I turn forty-six today, and I started the day by working the closing shift in the restaurant last night, getting home at 5:30. It was a good shift despite being one closer short.

It was also one year ago today that Frauke returned from one of her many business trips to Munich to tell that that she'd be given the opportunity to become a franchisee, and would be home a lot more in the future.

At Least They Have Snakes

2008-02-08T18:04:07+00:00

Boing Boing Gadgets mentions the upcoming LEGO Indiana Jones video game and how (like the toys) it will not display Nazi symbols. Good thing! As I mention in a comment, we already had to have a talk with Christopher about the Nazi symbols in the films. He's going have to deal with German history soon enough... he should be able to have fun with LEGO without having to be confronted with the symbols already.

Of course it goes without saying that without the evil marketing geniuses at LEGO releasing toys and games in advance of the upcoming movie, Christopher wouldn't know about Indiana Jones at all, and it wouldn't be an issue.

Pardon My Silence

2008-02-08T13:35:42+00:00

Forgive me for not posting an update on my brother here... I mentioned his status on Twitter, but most poeple would have missed that, I guess.

He was released from the hospital last Tuesday, 29 January, a week after being admitted. With two stents freeing the arteries that caused the arrest, his heart should now be better off than before. If his heart were his only health problem, he could have returned to work this week... but instead he is resuming his chemotherapy this weekend.

Emotionally, he's still a mess, angry and frustrated with God and the world. That's understandable, I guess, but not particularly constructive.

I returned home also last Tuesday after 5 days in Minnesota. Frauke was able to handle both son and business alone for a week, and things are now normal again at home. We've had an overnight meeting at Westerland for the two of us, a short school vacation and a late birthday party for Christopher, and a small sickness wave at work. In other words, more of the usual and less of the unusual.

Indy!

2008-02-04T08:44:53+00:00

Christopher as Indiana Jones, Fasching 2008.

Road Home

2008-01-27T14:02:43+00:00

My brother is fully awake now and has been moved to the telemetry ward and is no longer in intensive care. Telemetry means in this case he's attached to the monitors via WLAN instead of being hard-wired, or something like that. He'll have a second stent put in on Monday and is scheduled to be discharged on Tuesday.

As for me, I've booked a return flight to be back home Tuesday evening, just in time for report-card school vacation that starts on Wednesday. Thanks again for all the support online.

Sheriff Christopher

2008-01-26T13:08:22+00:00

Nice to see Christopher is keeping busy while I'm away.

Out of the Woods

2008-01-25T12:10:35+00:00

The good news is that my brother Steve, 4 years younger than I, is now awake and is stable after suffering a cardiac arrest on Tuesday. His condition is complicated by the fact that he had just started chemotherapy for the 2nd recurrence of cancer and had just recovered from a broken ankle which had delayed his cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The good news was that he was in the local hospital already when the arrest occurred, with what he though was serious heartburn, so he was resuscitated very quickly. He was airlifted to the regional cardiac center in St. Cloud, MN, where I am now, and placed in induced hypothermia (effectively a cold coma) to preserve brain function. Wednesday night they started to raise his temperature, and Thursday evening he opened his eyes and could respond to our voices.

I got the news at 7 am on Wednesday, and was on a plane by noon. There were plenty of seats, there aren't a lot of tourists in Minnesota in January, so the airfare was reasonable. Frauke and Christopher are doing fine on their own. My tentative return is next Wednesday, but that of course depends on, well, everythng.

Unplanned Trip

2008-01-23T09:29:16+00:00

I got the news this morning that my brother is sick, sick enough that I've dropped everything to fly to Minnesota right away to be with him and my family for a few days. This time of year it's easy to find seats (high temp in MSP today: -16°C). Got to find lots of long underwear before I go...

Update: I've arrived in Minnesota, my brother is stable and doing better. Thanks for all the well wishes!

Too Hot

2008-01-22T13:21:16+00:00

Good thing I ordered my WordCamp08 goods last week because now it is too late!

Business Cards

2008-01-21T21:09:08+00:00

I finally got around to ordering business cards.

Wulff Again

2008-01-19T09:55:01+00:00

There are three regional election campaigns going on in Germany, with three CDU state presidents up for re-election: Roland Koch in Hesse, Ole von Beust in Hamburg, and Christian Wulff in our own Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony).

We in Niedersachsen are blessed with the most boring of the three campaigns. The polls are showing a slight decline for Wulff's CDU from 5 years ago, when he was helped by an anti-Schröder backlash, but his CDU-FDP coalition is in no danger. Even the question of whether the new Linke party makes it into the legislature, which is messing up the calculus in the other two states, doesn't put Wulff's coalition in any jeopardy. Wullf is well-known and well-liked.

The challenger Wolfgang Jüttner has been a quiet party soldier in the Landtag 20 years and is not as well recognized. The SPD seems to be focussing more on their national theme of economic justice (minimum wage, etc.) than on their candidate or local issues.

We live in the media shadow from Hamburg, so we actually don't get very much news from our state capital of Hannover. Off the top of my head it's difficult to list the main themes of the campaign. The top issue is education. The CDU is for the traditional 3-track education system, and rolled back some of the reforms started under previous SPD governments. Luckily our elementary school in Jesteburg could keep its current form, but come 5th grade for Christopher we'll have to choose between the 3 tracks.

Another theme is the environment. Niedersachsen is the only German state with an FDP environment minister, which some think is a akin to having the fox watch the henhouse.

There were a couple of sparks as the SPD mentioned Wullf's private situation (separated, not divorced, new partner, expecting a baby), but this is Germany, not America, and noone cares.

Election day is January 27, the same day as in Hesse, where Roland Koch is is making headlines and is in real danger of losing his post. The coverage from Hannover that evening will be more of a footnote... "meanwhile in Niedersachsen Christian Wullf was able to stay in office with light losses".

Claire at Cheeseburgers and Sauerkraut has another expat view on the Niedersachsen election.

Proud of the Working Poor

2008-01-17T17:58:39+00:00

As German Joys states, the following quote from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) wouldn't fit anywhere in German politics:

I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.

(unless you mean by creating jobs you're creating more jobs per person).

Democrats Abroad Global Presidential Primary

2008-01-14T00:44:25+00:00

This is a public service announcement for expats of the Democratic persuasion.

This year for the first time, Democrats Abroad, the overseas branch of the US Democratic Party, is offering the opportunity for expats to vote in a Global Presidential Primary from February 5 to 12 to elect 22 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. You can vote over the internet, by fax, by mail or in person. You do need to be a US citizen eligible to vote in the general election in November, and you can vote either in the Global Primary or your home state's primary, but not both.

To vote in the Global Primary, you need to join Democrats Abroad by January 31, which you can do at http://www.VoteFromAbroad.org or at Democrats Abroad.

For equal time, there is also an organization for Republicans Abroad. However, they are not part of the Republican National Committee, so they don't elect any delegates to the Republican National Convention. But they can certainly help you get set up to participate in the nomination process in your home state.

But if you are a Republican, in all fairness, I hope that our guy (or girl) kicks your guy's butt in November.

Electoral Compass

2008-01-13T19:43:36+00:00

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At Electoral Compass USA you can take a survey and compare yourself to the major US presidential candidates. But I already knew I liked Obama, so I didn't learn anything new. (via Davos Newbies)

Coupons Coupons Coupons

2008-01-08T08:42:07+00:00

We didn't to be bored after our busy month in December, so we're running a coupon promotion for the next 3 weeks. These coupons are officially only valid for our restaurant, but many McDonald's in Germany are running similar promotions so you might be able to use them elsewhere.

McDonald's Takes On Starbucks

2008-01-07T20:14:04+00:00

Today's Wall Street Journal reports on McDonald's plans to add coffee bars to its 14,000 US restaurants by the end of this year (WSJ is not yet free, but the link should work for a few days). They will be similar but not quite the same as the McCafés in several hundred German McDonald's, including our restaurant in Dibbersen. It sounds like they will be putting the espresso machines behind the front counter instead of a separate shop-in-shop, in part to be able to serve all coffee products in drive-thru (German McCafé sells only in-store). It sounds like the investment will be $100,000 per store (total for 14,000 stores: $1.4 billion), but with an expected sales increase of $1 billion per year, it should pay off in a hurry.

Despite the headline, I don't think Starbucks has to worry. Customers wanting the full corporate coffee lounge experience will go out of their way and pay the higher prices. I also think it's interesting that US McDonald's is taking an innovation developed outside the US. Over half of McDonald's are outside the US, and with the US market fairly saturated, the exciting markets are also overseas.

Achieving z

2007-12-31T10:17:27+00:00

One month after our re-opening we're very happy with the new look and the McCafé. Our customers seem to be happy with it as well. I can't talk about numbers here, so I'll use letters instead.

Our monthly sales started at a level of *x*, and in our business plan we estimated that after the remodel they would increase to *y*. After 3 to 5 years of hard work and good business practices we estimated we could achieve a level of *z*.

As of yesterday we have already achieved *z* for December 2007.

That of course does not rule out the hard work and good business practices for the future... we want *z* to be the average for all months, and not just be the best month of the year. But it's yet another sign we're moving in the right direction.

In the short run, achieving *z* when your crew schedule and logistics have been planned for *y* presents problems of its own (i.e. short of crew and low on stock).

And even when you've achieved *z* that doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. There's always the next step, *z*+1.

And on that note... Happy New Year, everyone!

Filmmaker Christopher

2007-12-30T17:11:45+00:00

Christopher's trying his hand at stop-motion Playmobil animation. It would be cool except he's hogging my MacBook!

christopher is 8

2007-12-27T12:51:21+00:00

Christopher is 8, and the day begins with Pancake Cake á la Findus.

8!

2007-12-26T22:03:10+00:00

We'll see tomorrow how long it takes Christopher to notice the mirror.

Mary and Joseph

2007-12-23T19:00:25+00:00

This is Mary and Joseph, along with an unidentified donkey. They've had a long hard journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, but now they are just centimeters away from their goal. Christopher placed them on the kitchen table two weeks ago, and every day has moved them closer to the nativity scene near the back door. Two nights ago they were on the TV set. Today they made it on top of the radiator.

Here's wishing all of our readers that you find whatever you're looking for this season, even if it takes a two week journey from the kitchen table to the radiator. Merry Christmas!

Christopher Teaches Chess

2007-12-22T09:47:43+00:00

Christopher is teaching Mama to play chess this morning.

POTS VPN

2007-12-17T16:55:50+00:00

Now that we finally got DSL back after 10 days down, it turns out the T-VPN we are joining is a voice-service VPN, not a data VPN. I guess the Deutsche Telekom uses the term VPN differently than the rest of the world, which was confusing me (not to mention the fact that the whole transaction had to wait for our DSL line).

Not that a POTS (plain old telephone service) VPN isn't a cool thing, it's just not what I was expecting.

It's also cool that our other Telekom issues at the restaurant were both resolved today. We once again have a T-Mobile HotSpot (with an hour free WLAN every day!) and we have a DSL line for our flat screen TV.

December Surprise

2007-12-17T06:42:06+00:00

We're absolutely unprepared for Christmas this year (it always comes so unexpectedly every December). At work we've set the Christmas party for the end of January and are calling it a "End of Year" party. People seem to have more time in for Christmas parties in January anyway.

At least I got our photo cards ready for our friends and relatives in the States (as always at the USPS Card Store, where they mail the cards for us at domestic rates). Nothing new in the card if you read PapaScott regularly, but I did come up with a couple of good lines...

After 24 years of Frauke working for McDonald's, McDonald's now works for us!

(Almost sounds like a Soviet Russia joke. :-) )

(Christopher) keeps reminding us what is really important, and makes our lives a joy (even if it is sometimes a little messy).

I now notice I have at least one typo in the final version of the printed card. That's the nice thing about the internet... you can always go back and correct your speling.

Monomedia

2007-12-16T17:31:08+00:00

While we're waiting for a DSL line to attach to our multimedia system, we've been showing a fireplace DVD on the flat screen. Sure we have to chop a lot of wood to keep it going, but it fits in well with the Advent season.

By the way, if you're lucky, in our McCafé you'll get served by the owner herself.

Go Team

2007-12-15T22:55:56+00:00

For our new McCafé we've found the the perfect promotion team, 16 dynamic, active and athletic women. We now the uniform sponsors for the 1st women's handball team of TSV Buchholz 08, who play in the 3rd Hamburg Handball League. Last weekend we officially presented the uniforms in our Gym and Fun.

It would have been cool to have shirts in St. Pauli brown, but the supplier could only offer white with brown text. The league is on winter break, but the season resumes in January.

Flying Saucer

2007-12-14T19:36:06+00:00

We were offline a few days as our DSL line was transferred to, er, the largest telecommunications provider in Germany. But now we're back, and we can present our flying coffee bean, or as Frauke calls it, the McKAfé Ford KA. Now appearing daily at busy parking lots and autobahn exits.

Still Cut Off

2007-12-07T16:52:11+00:00

We finally got a confirmation from T-Systems... our DSL at home will be back up next Monday. I have no idea why a change of DSL provider requires a 6 day downtime.

I also have no idea why when I try to call the Telekom business customer service hotline, I always end up talking to a household customer service representative who cannot access any data for business customers.

In the end, our home office will be part of our restaurant VPN, so we'll be able to access all our restaurant data from home. It will be worth it in the end, I'm sure, but the downtime has been very annoying. In the meantime I've rigged up a tin can with a string... that is, a bluetooth connection to a cell phone with a data flatrate... so we can at least read mail and check our bank accounts.

No DSL

2007-12-06T05:31:41+00:00

The PapaScott household is currently without DSL. We have to switch our line from 1&1 to T-Com to connect to our business VPN. The switch was scheduled for the 8th, but the Telekom decided to cut off our access on the 3rd. So the internet will have to get along without us for a few days.

Open Glühwein Club

2007-12-03T12:30:44+00:00

Nico is hosting a Glühwein get-together at the Rathausmarkt in Hamburg tomorrow evening (Tuesday, 4 Dec) at 6:30 pm. By hosting I mean Nico has set the time and place, not that he's buying the first round. But I could be wrong. :-)

I'll try to be there at least for the beginning. How long I stay depends on whether Christopher comes with me or not.

We'll be at the Friesenschänke stand, which is directly on the left when one faces the Rathaus from the bus stop. I'll be standing next to the guy holding a mug of Glühwein.

Second Day with McCafé

2007-12-02T15:50:59+00:00

We were so busy yesterday that we forgot to take pictures, but here's a set at Flickr with some outdoor and indoor views of our new look: Second Day with McCafé.

We're the Kids in US-America (oh-oh)

2007-12-01T05:19:29+00:00

For those with an fetish for whipping an expired stallion, Scot W. Stevenson (of USA Erklärt) has posted an updated text (in German, outside of his blog) against the term "US-amerikanisch". I don't have much to add, except that maybe that the Spanish and Portuguese residents of the Americas also do not refer to themselves as "Americanos", and that a musical reference to Kim Wilde is missing. A gratuitous reference to the poor knowledge in Germany of geography outside of Europe would also be cute.

We Knew You'd Be Coming So We Baked A Cake

2007-11-30T22:15:45+00:00

A coupon for a free piece of apple or cherry-yoghurt cake with purchase of a tall cappuccino good until 31 January.

T Minus 6 Hours

2007-11-30T12:39:07+00:00

Officially we re-open tomorrow at 7 am, but we're hoping to have things cleaned up this afternoon so we can serve guests inside this evening.

Even with all the debris in the way, several guests per hour will fight their way to the door only to be disappointed by the closed lobby. Give us a few more hours, please!

T Minus 24 Hours

2007-11-29T19:19:26+00:00

It's finally starting to look like what we imagined...

Grand Opening In The New Style

2007-11-27T22:25:06+00:00

The past 10 days have been crazy hectic, but we can now say with 99% certainty that we will open our McCafé this Saturday. We've been handing out coupons, we've given interviews, we'll be giving a reception for press and politicians (and a few friends) next week, and we've got an ad in the local paper...

You Can Say You To Me

2007-11-20T05:33:59+00:00

Now that I've stuck my foot firmly in my mouth with regards to Ami, I'll now try to stick it in even further with a couple of more German terms, namely the second-person pronouns "Du" and "Sie". In English we did away with the informal forms "thee" and "thou" ages ago, but in German one still has to sort out the formal "Sie" and the informal "Du".

When we took over the restaurant we made the conscious decision to address all employees as "Du" and by first name and invite them to address us the same way. For one thing, we wanted to send a signal that we were going to be very involved in the restaurant and be very accessible to all employees. The staff were pretty much all "duzing" one another anyway, and we wanted to be included. Our own experience with "Du" at the workplace had been good... Frauke had always been on a first-name basis with her top-level subordinates, and I had been in the IT industry where "Du" is the norm. In addition, we didn't to play any favorites. In any workplace you start "duzing" a few employees, and you end up the appearance that some employees are more favored than others. Finally, we wanted to remove a barrier to communication... it's a lot shorter and quicker to say "Frauke" than "Frau Petersen-Hanson".

I know from experience the switch can be somewhat unnerving. After working in a traditional German office environment (well, as traditional as working mostly with expats can be), I was floored to be addressed as Du by the CEO on my first day working at an IT firm. The novelty and cuteness wears off after a few days, though, and it becomes normal.

Our results in the restaurant have been mostly positive. The new hires pick up on it right away, and the old hands after a time have gotten used to our first names, though some still use the Sie pronoun. That's OK... we're not playing IKEA and forcing everyone to say Du to one another. Interestingly, it's the foreign-born staff that has put up the most resistance. I guess after having learned Du and Sie in a new language, it's hard to shift gears. Or maybe we haven't communicated our reasons well enough.

PapaScott On Tour (Not)

2007-11-18T11:17:19+00:00

I had really hoped to make it to the Whiney Expat Blogger in Germany Meet-Up in Dresden this weekend. I cleared my own schedule and have the weekend off, but alas my time depends on two other schedules as well. I couldn't leave Christopher alone with Frauke on the weekend our construction starts getting serious, so we agreed that I would stay at home.

Too bad. I haven't been to Dresden since 1995, and I'm sure a lot has changed since then. And now that they've build the A14 Autobahn between Magdeburg and Dresden, it's a lot easier to get to. Google Maps says it's a 4:20 drive, and Google forgets that Germany has no speed limit.

In any case, I've tried to do some extra whining on PapaScott the past few weeks to make up for my absence. And once our McCafé is up and running, maybe we can host a mini-meetup and invite some bloggers over for coffee and cake (sometime in the first half of 2008).

In the meantime I've registered for the German WordCamp conference in Hamburg on January 27-28. One of my plugins in the German WordPress distribution, so I might still have some street cred regarding WordPress. My free time is tentative, so I might have to cancel at the last minute, but by then our business should have settled down somewhat.

Customer Order Display

2007-11-17T10:19:45+00:00

Yesterday as part of our remodelling we installed a new drive-thru order taking system. It features a Customer Order Display, where the guest can see his order as it is being entered into our POS. We wanted to make sure it was up and running before we close the lobby for construction next week. For 10 days we will be running with drive-thru only.

The number one complaint at our and at any McDonald's is incorrect orders in drive-thru. This will eliminate one source of error, miscommunication between the guest and the order-taker. We also replaced the wireless system with improved sound quality for order taking. That should also reduce the number of errors and increase the speed of service.

Christopher and I tried it out last night, and we had a great experience! Frauke knew we were coming, though, and presented the order herself. Normally children do not get a kiss from their mother when receiving orders in our drive-thru, but Christopher did. :-)

Is "Ami" an Insult?

2007-11-16T20:10:34+00:00

At American im Odenwald Martina wonders why an American in Germany would name a blog AmiExpat. Isn't "Ami" an insulting term for Americans?

I've never felt insulted by the term Ami, and said so in her comments. Germans are always coming up with funny shortened names for things, like Wessi, Ossi, Sozi, Fundi. Such terms are more for bar talk than everyday speech, but I've never seen any harm in them. The split in the comments seemed to be 50-50, though, between those who felt uncomfortable with the term and those who did not.

I'm curious about it, though, so I'll ask me readers here. Is "Ami" a harmless term, or have I been being insulted all these years?

(On the other hand, I don't like the term "US-amerikanisch" to describe my nationality or my language. It'd be like referring to "European Germans".)

Find The Entrance

2007-11-16T15:51:47+00:00

Somewhere behind the big red trash container, the cement mixer and the scaffolding is the main entrance to our restaurant. Yes, we're still open! And we're still running double digit increases in our guest count over last year! Here are some more photos of the construction.

In the meantime we've put our own branding on the container...

The Subjunctive Mood is a Sign of Weakness

2007-11-12T17:16:31+00:00

I've reported before that in Germany you have to say no very directly for it to be understood as no. I've recently discovered that the same principle can apply to "yes".

Recently in a hotel Frauke mislaid her cell phone and sent me to the reception desk to check if anyone had found it. Indeed, a cell phone had been found, and it looked very similar to Frauke's phone, and I was asked if it was her phone. I couldn't be sure, though, without opening the case, so trying to be friendly and polite I replied "Yes, it could be." (Ja, es könnte sein.)

This was not accepted as an affirmative reply. I forget the exact response, but it was along the lines of "Well are you sure or are you not?" or "Is that supposed to be yes or no?" I had to start over and say that Frauke's name would appear on the display when it was turned on, and that would prove whether it was her phone or not.

In Germany it pays to be sure of yourself, even when you're not. Arrogance here is not a negative attribute, but rather a prerequisite. :-)

Towed Away

2007-11-09T19:01:27+00:00

This is what can happen in Hamburg if you park near the river and you don't pay attention to the weather report (from jenskunath.eu).

Best. Online. Shop. Ever.

2007-11-09T16:23:59+00:00

I can only agree with Cem and Der Shopblogger. The Hema Shop beats Amazon, Ebay, and everything else. It is the best online shop ever and is worth a visit, even if you can't read Dutch.

Why Didn't You Park There?

2007-11-09T13:37:32+00:00

This is yet another episode in the ongoing series "Germans are Strange and Wonderful Creatures"...

During a particularly hard week of night shifts, I needed to get to the bank on Wednesday morning. Our bank has the proverbial "bankers' hours", they're closed on Wednesday afternoons. Wednesday is also market day in Buchholz, and the rare parking spaces downtown are even harder to find than usual.

So this particular Wednesday I had been trolling for a parking spot for nearly 15 minutes without any success. At our local Famila market I finally spotted a space, but it was very tight and I decided not to risk it. The lady behind me pulled in, I drove on and found a better spot further up that was actually closer to the bank.

I was gathering my stuff together when someone tapped on my window. It was the lady who was driving me. She was wondering why I passed by a perfectly good parking space. I was flabbergasted. She was very nice about it, but what business was it of hers or anybody else where I chose to park or not to park my car?

Looking back on it, this was a typical case of German arrogance and their inborn compulsion to point out other people's mistakes. This compulsion is especially evident in situations involving cars and driving. Never mind that my behavior was completely logical, for her it was a mistake. And even though she was very nice and polite, she was compelled to go out of her way and tell me about it. She couldn't help herself. She's German, and it's in her blood.

What Time Is It?

2007-11-08T08:30:40+00:00

After my entry yesterday, here is yet another in the ongoing series "Germans are Strange and Wonderful Creatures"...

Ten days ago Europe switched back from Daylight Savings to Standard Time, turning the clocks back one hour on Sunday morning at 3 am. Our McDrive is open until 4 am on weekends, and we made the decision not to stay open an extra hour for the time change.

I had night shift that night, and I closed at 4 am DST as planned. Twenty minutes later a very angry guest pounded on our drive-thru window. It was 3:20, we should be open, and why wouldn't we serve him?

As is often the case with arrogant Germans, technically he was correct. Standard Time was in effect, the time was 3:20 am. However, it's my business and I can open and close the doors when I damn well please. I shouted politely but firmly through the closed window that we were closed, and that if he did not leave the premises in 5 minutes I would call the cops.

The angry guest then left. Being a know-it-all German means that you can often be smug about being correct, but it usually doesn't make things any better. He was still hungry.

What If You Get Stopped?

2007-11-07T22:16:38+00:00

Yesterday I left my wallet at home when I drove to work. At 5 am, I'm lucky to remember anything on my way out. Unfortunately, I didn't notice my wallet was missing until after work and I had just filled my tank at the Aral gas station across the street from the restaurant.

The only thing I had of value to leave as a deposit was my car registration. The woman behind the counter didn't want to take it at first... what if I got stopped by the police, I would need my registration. I talked her into it, as I had nothing else to offer, and she let me return 30 minutes later with EC card to pay for my diesel.

Her concern was typically German and actually pretty silly. If I would really have been stopped, having a stolen tank of gas and no driver's license would have interested the police much more the missing registration. :-)

Construction

2007-11-05T20:11:15+00:00

We've started exterior construction. We're expanding the lobby in three directions. The restaurant is fully open, but the patio and PlayLand are (obviously) closed. Interior remodeling is set to begin in two weeks. The McDrive will remain open during the remodeling, but the lobby will be closed. Re-opening with McCafé is scheduled for the beginning of December.

Here's the 'before' view from May 2007.

Halloween in Lüllau

2007-10-31T20:18:32+00:00

I'm not sure which was more scary... the pumpkin (Christopher's own design... the features are deliberately out of kilter),

or the costume.

Our big pumpkin turned out to be a huge gourd, nearly solid inside. It was difficult to carve.

We also had a craft corner for Halloween at the restaurant, where kids could create their own lantern or masks, or just draw and hang out.

Halloween Carving Kit

2007-10-30T17:20:22+00:00

With the proper tools, we'll have these pumpkins ground to a pulp in no time.

Help Wanted

2007-10-28T15:12:37+00:00

To prepare for our McCafé opening the first week of December, we placed an ad in the Nordheide Wochenblatt, our local weekly paper. We're looking for help for both the McCafé and the restaurant, so the ad is not specific for either. In the first 24 hours we've already gotten a number of online applications. (This graphic includes a slight error... we're looking for several "motivated employees", not just one).

We've also ordered a color recruitment poster which we'll be posting in our lobby this week.

Street Soccer Heroes

2007-10-26T17:56:18+00:00

The McDonald's & DFB Street Soccer event in Dibberson was a couple of weeks ago, and we all put our soccer skills to the test. I had the highest point score in the family, by the way, because I was able to master the short pass rebound wall. Here's a link to the set if you don't see it below.

Long-Term Debt

2007-10-26T12:06:50+00:00

WHen Mama and Christopher came home from Legoland last night, his first words to me were "Papa, you're gong to be upset with me!" I knew he'd be coming in with an oversized and overpriced Lego toy...

Sure enough, he had an Imperial Star Destroyer from the Star Wars collection (Nico, that's item number 6211 if you want one for yourself).

Christopher muttered something about a reduced price of "800" (I hope he meant Danish Crowns and not Euros!), and that he'd be getting no allowance for 10 months to pay it off. I'm not sure, though, whether incurring long-term debt really enhances the pedagogical effect of giving children a weekly allowance.

Or maybe I'm just jealous. All I got was a key ring. :-)

Define Crisis

2007-10-25T03:05:48+00:00

Which of the following explanations would you choose to define the term "milk crisis"?

1. There's not a single drop of milk in the house... the baby's going to starve is we don't... buy... milk.. RIGHT... NOW!!!

2. There are actually 3 liters of milk in the fridge, but since the shops are closed tomorrow, we might run out on Monday if someone happens to go on a latte macchiato binge.

This is obviously one of the many areas of disagreement in our marriage. As our ships passed in the night between shifts last Saturday, Frauke informed me that we had a "milk crisis" at home. I thought of Definition 1 (sans baby), and stocked up with 8 liters. She was actually referring to Definition 2.

As a result, a few days later we will soon be facing a "sour milk crisis", the definition of which I will leave to the reader.

Married Or Not, Here We Come...

2007-10-23T20:02:15+00:00

Sometimes getting married in Vegas isn't all it's advertised to be, according to Hal, our correspondent in Vegas:

Were they really married? Couples have cause to doubt [LV Sun]

As far as Kimberly Shirak of Ypsilanti, Mich., is concerned, she and her husband of six months are married - really, truly, legally married.

And to prove it, she’s got a marriage certificate from Las Vegas’ Garden of Love, photos of family members and an Elvis impersonator, and the signature of an official witness.

Problem is, the witness - the chapel’s co-owner - was about 1,000 miles away at the time of the April 7 nuptials, watching an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in Texas.

So, back to the big question: Does that mean Shirak is or isn’t married?

We may not have gotten married in Vegas, but on the eve of our silver anniversary (we're still undecided as to whether we'll throw a grand party or silently slink out of the country for the weekend... right now, we're leaning toward the latter) it's probably worth looking at the facts.

At our courthouse ceremony in Minneapolis in 1983, we never actually paid the judge. She went on to Minnesota Court of Appeals, so it didn't seem to hurt her career.
Our original marriage certificate is defaced. Frauke is named on the certificate as "Frauke (NMN) Petersen" (NMN = no middle name), which she took that as a grave insult, and blotted out the "(NMN)" with a quart of Liquid Paper.
Our German ceremony in 1985 was church-only, which in Germany counts for nothing. If you're not at a Standesamt, it doesn't count.
When we moved to Germany in 1990, our American marriage certificate was initially not accepted by the Germany authorities... not because of the suspicious white blotch in the middle of the bride's name, but because the certificate did not have a number. The office in Kiel sent it off to the central Standesamt in Berlin, and 6 weeks later it was accepted, but with a long explanatory remark in our German Familienbuch certificate.
Since we each kept our last names when we married in the States, which is not allowed in Germany, most people in Germany assumed we were not married when we were introduced with separate last names. (Frauke has since added a hyphenated "-Hanson" to her name, not for my sake, but for Christopher's).

At this point, after 24 years, I don't think either of us has any interest in refuting the assumption that in spite of any and all doubts, we are truly married. Particularly with Frauke's career and financial success, the fact that we've had a joint bank account all these years would make a disentanglement of our affairs complicated and (for her) expensive.

Then again, our bank just sent out updated EC cards for our personal account... and my card came addressed to her. Should I be worried?

Seventeen and Pregnant

2007-10-16T20:36:53+00:00

This week we're taking a break from our usual routine for me to attend (along with our trainee) the McDonald's "Shift Management Course" in Hamburg. For one thing I get to relive the rush-hour commute (with a possible rail strike on Thursday, yippee!), while Frauke gets to work a week of night shifts so she has afternoons free when Christopher comes home from school.

I took the equivalent course for shift management back in 1991, but I've been away too long so I need to start from scratch. There's actually very little McDonald's-specific material in the course, it's mostly about communication and leadership. Today we had a session on employment law, so now I know such things as how long a 17-year-old pregnant (in the 5th month) employee can work each day, as well as when and how long she is required to take a break. Anyone care to guess?

Improved Visibility

2007-10-14T12:14:26+00:00

Thanks to Robert, our amazing technical service person, the frame is now higher and we have improved visibility for our banners. Having the sun shine helps as well.

Fake IDs

2007-10-14T09:48:50+00:00

The current political headline topic, whether the government should hire juveniles to test whether shops sell alcohol and cigarettes to minors, seems pretty dumb to me. Why don't they just hire adults that look young and give them fake IDs?

20 Cents Per Roll

2007-10-12T11:59:53+00:00

Here's a problem you won't see at Web 2.0 startups. Our bank charges us for buying coins. The price is 20 cents per roll, regardless of denomination. A roll of 25 2-Euro coins costs the same as a roll of 50 1-cent coins. We don't get credit for rolls of coin we bring in. Of course the coins we use most are the 1-cent coins. At 20 cents per 50-cent roll, that's a good profit margin... for the bank, not us.

Strangely, we always have to buy 1-cent and 1-Euro coins, but we always have a surplus of 2-cent and 2-Euro coins.

Help Wanted

2007-10-12T08:50:58+00:00

If you'd like to work in our McCafé, you can now view a job description and apply online.

Broken Window

2007-10-05T06:17:47+00:00

The October 3rd holiday was good for the restaurant (it was like an extra weekend in the middle of the week), but it wasn't so good for our indoor playland. A child kicked out one of the clear plastic panels, and we had to close it down for the rest of the day.

We will be getting rid of the playland when we remodel next month (we need the room for more seats), so it's not worth the bother to properly repair. As I was leaving yesterday, a carpenter was putting in a round wooden panel so that we could let kids back into the plastic box.

Banner Ad

2007-10-04T15:37:07+00:00

The building permit will be here any day now, but we've started advertising the upcoming McCafé anyway. You can see our banner from both the street and from the McDrive (that's German for "Drive Thru" :-)).

Big Mac Pulled

2007-10-03T09:39:15+00:00

This is a 60-cm tall model Big Mac (they mistakenly put the lettuce on top of the cheese instead of underneath, but we can forgive that).

This is a Big Mac being pulled across a muddy field. The organizers have a whole gallery of pictures, as well as videos.

Soon with McCafé!

2007-10-02T08:13:43+00:00

The remodeling won't start for another 6 weeks, but our first in-store posters are on their way.

Deutschland Weltmeister. Again.

2007-09-30T21:45:29+00:00

It was worth mentioning the first time 4 years ago, and even more so today. Germany defeated Brazil 2-0 to win their second straight Women's World Cup. Germany did not give up a single goal in the tournament, and keeper Nadine Angerer stopped a penalty and a number of good shots to ensure the win.

Adieu DB

2007-09-29T11:37:12+00:00

PapaScott (the blog, not the man) took an unexpected massage the past couple of days. My MySQL database seems to have disappeared from my hoster, just a couple of days after upgrading to WordPress 2.3. I didn't have time to track down the problem, I simply restored the last backup dump (which I mail to myself daily), which of course had character set issues (mixed latin1 and utf8 characters). But now we're running pure UTF-8 on MySQL 5.0, and everything should be fine until I have to restore from backup again.

Bike Tour

2007-09-21T20:17:49+00:00

We're home from our meetings, which was indeed on board the AIDAaura cruise ship which was chartered for the occasion. We sailed a circle from Palma de Mallorca to Cannes and Barcelona, then back to Palma.

For our shore leaves we chose to take mountain bike tours. Here I am yesterday in front of the Palau Nacional in Barcelona. I'm smiling only because I don't realize that we're not even half way to the Montjuïc castle. I later learned that sane people take a cable car to the castle rather than a mountain bike.

Radio Silence

2007-09-16T19:42:25+00:00

We'll be away a few days attending a licensee meeting. It's at a conference center literally in the middle of nowhere, but we'll have plenty of time for R and R. Oma will be at home with Christopher, and we'll be back Friday.

Google Map

2007-09-15T16:55:11+00:00

We've finally got a couple of current entries on the home page for the restaurant, so it looks almost weblog-like, and we finally have a satellite image from Google Maps. The toughest part was figuring out how to customize the icon without it getting squished (hint: the graphic file has to be square, since it gets reduced to 32x32 pixels).

View Larger Map

Update: I forgot to say that I'm using the relatively new embedded map feature of Google Maps, where similar to YouTube you can generate some HTML directly in Google Maps without having to mess with the API. To use a custom icon you need a load a KML file into Google Maps that references an URL for the icon. It seems easiest to use Google Earth to create the KML file than to try to create it from scratch.

Give Blood. Play Rugby.

2007-09-13T07:41:13+00:00

The Red Cross Bloodmobile will be at our restaurant in Dibbersen on 18 September from 14:00 to 20:00, for those who prefer to give blood without playing rugby.

Branding Light

2007-09-07T16:24:55+00:00

It's not yet the meter-high arches we have planned, but it's a start.

24th Anniversary

2007-09-06T19:25:11+00:00

I was just directed to make the same blog posting* that I make every year on this date (or close to it). Ok, here it is.

Let it be known that I gave my wife 20 beautiful flowers from a meadow (Wiesn) in Munich. I would have bought 24, but the 0.5 liter bottles came only in a case of 20.

*The bride now requests that the posting from 2002 be corrected from "she arrived in July, with ... nothing in her pocket" to "she arrived in July, with ... just $2000 in her pocket" (earned by delivering the Sunday papers Bild am Sonntag and Welt am Sonntag). It doesn't make any difference, by September the money was spent.

Google Reader Search

2007-09-06T05:35:56+00:00

Cool! Google has now implemented search in Google Reader, so you can now find important stuff you know you saw once in one of your feeds.

Sewage Pump

2007-09-05T13:27:08+00:00

Our German word for today is *Hebeanlage*, and what happens when it clogs up.

Actually, since *Hebeanlage* is a sewage pump, you can probably imagine what happens, and don't particularly want to know any details. So I'll just say that it was, and it did. And it's fixed, at least for now.

Web 0.1

2007-09-01T08:35:22+00:00

We haven't done as much as we've wanted with http://www.mcdonalds-nordheide.de/, the homepage for our restaurant, not yet anyway. For the past few weeks we just haven't had the time, since we've both been immersed full-time in day-to-day operations.

Frauke's been waiting for me to set up a form for customer feedback, and I finally have a page ready for Gästefeedback based on a similar form for McDonald's in Mering. I didn't really want to create a form from scratch, but after some searching I found the Secure Form Mailer Plugin For Wordpress that let me create an arbitrary form and insert it into a WordPress page. It's functional, but I need to optimize the layout and add some explanatory text. Our plan is then to print our URL on our receipts so our customers know we're on the web.

Texting is another hurdle. I don't feel comfortable writing text in German... not just out of concerns for spelling and grammar, but because my sentences would not be natural. I'm not sure if Frauke wants to take the time to write text herself, so I'm not sure what we'll end up doing. (Hmm, I just realized "texting" as a verb is a Germanism and not proper English, so maybe my English text is suspect as well.)

I can imagine our start page being a type of weblog with current events and promotions (something like the Big Mac Pulling entry I posted here). A homepage for us is a nice-to-have, certainly not a must-have. Our target audience live within 15 km of the restaurant, and there are other ways we can reach them. However, I can imagine various ways we can encourage people to check our homepage regularly, with online coupons perhaps, with an RSS feed or updates on Twitter. Once our McCafè is running (we're now waiting for the building permit, projected grand opening on 6 December) we'll start a promotions offensive, and you'll hear all about it.

Big Mac Pulling

2007-08-31T06:46:16+00:00

A couple of weeks ago the Mini-Car-Club Nordheide asked us if we'd like to sponsor an event on the vacant lot next to our restaurant. The idea was so wild we just had to say yes... a pulling contest for remote-controlled models (1:5/1:6) featuring a 60 cm replica of a Big Mac with up to 22 kg. The Big Mac Pulling will take place on Sunday, September 30, 9:00 to 18:00. Buchholz has Sunday shopping on that day as well, so those not interested in cars and dirt will have something to do as well.

Christopher's Homemade Berliner

2007-08-31T06:11:33+00:00

Christopher's homemade Berliner. All the goodness of a bakery Berliner without being cooked in lard.

1 "normal" Brötchen (known in these parts as a Rundstück)
Strawberry jam
Powdered sugar

Bore a hole in the Brötchen with the kitchen utensil of your choice. Fill with jam, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Enjoy, but please wipe up the powdered sugar from the table when you're done.

Baby A

2007-08-25T16:40:57+00:00

We've only been in business 7 weeks, and we already have our first new baby. Baby A was born yesterday, a healthy boy, and our joy is doubled since both father and mother are on our payroll. Welcome to the world!

In Common

2007-08-24T20:04:33+00:00

Quiz question for the day: what do the United States, Liberia and Myanmar have in common? No, it has nothing to do with human rights (but Daring Fireball readers already know the answer).

Twitter Me Do

2007-08-23T04:44:42+00:00

If you haven't noticed on the sidebar, I've been sending a couple of tweets each to Twitter. They aren't all that interesting, since I'm either at home or in the restaurant, and I haven't yet gotten in the habit of sending tweets from work. You can also find me on Facebook, if you're into that.

I have today off, though, and Christopher and I will be off on a grand expedition searching for mummies and dinosaurs. That's right, we're taking a day trip with the ICE to Berlin where we'll check out some museums and the Lego Discovery Center. We won't be home until after dark.

Two More Weeks

2007-08-20T09:20:45+00:00

We're still busy at the restaurant covering management shifts for vacations. The end is in sight. The last assistant just started his vacation, and by September we'll be back to full strength. We'll also have a couple people who can cover a couple of hours between shifts, so we won't need to cover every minute of every day with a salaried manager.

The Vattenfall Cyclassics bicycle race went by our restaurant yesterday, with the highway closed at our intersection the entire morning. We didn't know if it would be a boom or a bust. It turned out to be a bust. The road was closed well in front of the restaurant, no cars could reach us, and our noon business was basically nothing. During school vacation business has been pretty unpredictable. We're looking forward to school starting again in two weeks so that both we and our customers have regular schedules again.

Alarm Alarm

2007-08-13T01:08:41+00:00

The boss changed a few things at the restaurant while Christopher and I were gone, and one of them was a new alarm system. The system had some startup glitches, but the repairman was there on Saturday to fix a broken sensor. Since I had the late shift on Saturday as my first day back, I was the lucky one to see if the system now worked.

I was still a little groggy from jet lag when I came in last night, but I got a chip and the general instructions to activate the system (push star, wave the chip, push star again). If the green light comes on, the system is activated. If not, I have to double check all the doors and try again. OK, I think I got it. I go through the late shift, we come out at 5:15 am, and I do the star-chip-star thing. The green light blinks a few times and goes out.

Is the alarm now active or not? I have no idea. I now wish I had been a little bit more attentive, for example whether the light was supposed to blink or stay on, and especially the part about deactivating the alarm. The phone number for the alarm company is in the store, I don't have it on me. If I go in and the alarm is active, lights and sirens go off and the police are on their way. Since I'm married to the boss, I decide to take the easy way out. I go home and wake her up.

She's not thrilled, of course, but she calls in and sure enough, the alarm is not active. I go in again, check all the doors, and try again. Same thing happens. By now it's 6:15 am, the opening manager is going to be there in an hour anyway, and I decide to give up and go home to bed.

This was not satisfactory for Frauke... she now has no idea whether the alarm system is still broken or whether her husband is just too dumb to use it. Or maybe noone told him that there is a status monitor in the office to check whether all the doors are locked. It turns out the door to the utility room (a separate room only accessible from outside) is unlocked. During the day it had been opened for, irony of ironies, the repairman from the alarm company. Once that door was locked, Frauke was able to activate the alarm... then she had to deactivate it again right away, since the opening manager had already arrived.

And of course there's no indication from the outside whether the alarm is active or not... otherwise any thief could check the system himself before trying to break in. The trick is that a buzzer sounds if the activation was successful. Tonight I had night shift again... and this time the alarm worked. Don't say I'm not capable of learning from my mistakes.

Vacation Over

2007-08-11T16:33:49+00:00

Christopher and I arrived home yesterday after two weeks in Minnesota.

* I only gained two pounds after two weeks of American food and relative inactivity. I was thrilled to be able to buy size 36 pants from Lands End after years of wearing size 38.

* We managed to need only the same two suitcases for the flight back that we brought with us... one for toys (mostly Lego), one for everything else.

* Christopher seemed to think that vacation meant also a vacation from changing clothes... including underwear.

* I got to try out the new 20 inch iMac the day after they were announced. It's nice, but my boss would never let me buy one. :-)

* Flying Icelandair from Frankfurt to Minneapolis was as pleasant as expected (no frills, but easy stopover at Keflavik). We both were even able to sleep some. Making the connection in Frankfurt was somewhat problematic, though. I would say getting from Terminal 1A to 2E in Frankfurt through construction with full luggage and a 7 year old qualifies as a level of Hell in Dante's Inferno.

* Flying an overbooked and late Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Hamburg full of annoyed business people would also qualify.

* We didn't go anywhere near the 35W bridge while in the Twin Cities, but our flight flew right over with an excellent view from above.

* I get to work late shift tonight, just one day after flying in. I can't say I'm real excited about that, although with jet lag my personal clock is running late anyway. Frauke is taking the weekend off... her first days off since we took over in Dibbersen on July 1. I'll be working night shifts for the rest of Christopher's school vacation. That simplifies child care.

Iceland Sweater

2007-08-10T18:35:51+00:00

At the duty-free shop at Keflavik airport, I found an Iceland sweater with a unique new technology that warms from both the inside and the outside simultaneously. It was a deal I could not resist.

Here's what the inside looks like. The label says something about "black death". I hope we won't be regretting my purchase.

Water Monster

2007-08-07T19:32:45+00:00

Every body of water where Christopher swims seems to be infested with splashing monsters.

Coming Home

2007-08-07T13:55:17+00:00

While Christopher and I are both enjoying our time in Minnesota, we're both ready to fly home on Thursday. Two weeks is more than long enough for our family to split on two continents. And given all the flight delays this summer on US carriers, I'm glad we're taking Icelandair directly out of MSP.

The 35W bridge collapse continues to dominate both the local and the national news, even though there has been no real news from the site since the morning after the collapse. We left Minneapolis in 1989, and the stories coming out of the collapse have been interesting to see how the city has changed (the many immigrants among the victims)... and how it has stayed the same (the incredible willingness of total strangers to help). As DaveP says, one disturbing thing is how quickly the authorities took complete control of the surrounding area... until yesterday there was no place for the public to view the site for themselves.

We'll be heading to Minneapolis a day early so we can rest up before our flight. There's a water park near the Mall of America where we can deposit Christopher. Our suitcases are already full, so there's no room for goodies from the Lego or the Apple stores. That's probably a good thing.

Bridge Collapse

2007-08-02T12:37:17+00:00

Just to let everyone know that we were not in Minneapolis or in the Twin Cities yesterday, so we are not affected by the bridge collapse on Interstate 35W (Tagesschau report) yesterday. No family or friends of ours would be normally commuting on that highway during evening rush hour.

However I know the bridge and the neighborhood well. It crosses the Mississippi between downtown Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota, and I lived near the bridge in Southeast Minneapolis my first two years in college. Blogger DaveP lives in that neighborhood today.

Minneapolis like Hamburg is a city built on a river. You cross bridges over the river every day without giving it a second thought, taking it for granted. Thank God that due to road maintenance, only one lane was open on the bridge in each direction. It could have been a lot worse.

24 Hr Live Bait

2007-07-30T00:07:34+00:00

In Minnesota you can get the necessities of life 24 hours a day.

We're serious.

Dead serious.

Letter Home

2007-07-29T12:55:39+00:00

Greetings from Lake Minnewaska! Whoever has the WiFi still has it turned on, so I have Internet as long as I sit outside.

The weather is pretty much perfect.... 85° and clear. Christopher gets a whole hide-a-bed to himself, so he likes that. It's Waterama weekend, so Glenwood is full. We found a swim mask and snorkel on special for $7, so Christopher can now explore the bottom of the lake. He found 6 golf balls at the end of the dock.... Grandma thinks an angry wife must have dumped them there. The hot water heater is burned out, so no hot showers until we can pick up a part on Monday.

Christopher wants to go to the indoor "swim park with the donuts" (i.e. waterslide with inner tubes) Alexandria, we'll try to wait until we have a rainy or a hot day. Turns out he packed only one pair of socks, so we might have to go back to Target to buy essential clothes (and a camera I'm looking at) while we're there. We have 3 baseball tickets for next Saturday afternoon (Twins and the Indians) for us and Uncle Steve, we'll have to make a special trip to the Cities for that.

Grandpa is doing well. He looks better than I had expected. I think Christopher was a good motivation for him to feel better.

Wish you were here! The espresso pot makes too much for one person alone. :-)

Minnesota Buzz

2007-07-27T15:53:37+00:00

The first thing we did when we arrived was to give Christopher a proper Minnesota haircut.

The Things I Do For My Son

2007-07-24T21:25:16+00:00

Spending 3 hours shoving CDs into my MacBook so he can listen to Harry Potter on the plane tomorrow... on my iPod, no less.

And After

2007-07-19T16:22:32+00:00

Before she drove an Audi. As of yesterday she drives a VW Cross Touran. It's more practical and, now that we have to pay for it ourselves, less of a drain on the pocketbook.

Tostedt HRB 200842

2007-07-18T10:20:57+00:00

It took over 8 weeks, but as of yesterday Frauke's GmbH is finally registered with the local court in Tostedt. (GmbH is short for Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, literally "company with limited liability", a form of incorporation common in Germany.)

Theoretically the formation of a GmbH takes only a week, but the papers returned twice (or was it three times) by the court to our notary for minor errors. We had become extremely annoyed by the entire process, and finally yesterday Frauke personally went to the court yesterday to finalize the process. We absolutely needed the HRB number now in order to register and get plates for her company car, which is being delivered today.

The lack of papers has also complicated our dealings with the bank and the Finanzamt (not only for our own taxes, but for VAT and withholding taxes from wages), and not least delayed the formal purchase contract for the restaurant. We finally be able to get all these affairs settled.

A GmbH is a matter of public record, so you can go to http://www.handelsregister.de/, search for Registernummer 200842 at Registergericht Tostedt, and see the details for yourself.

Minus Five

2007-07-15T20:21:45+00:00

After two weeks getting reacquainted with restaurant work, on Friday afternoon I had my first long shift alone, the mid-shift from 1 to 9 pm. Fridays are extra challenging since the dinner hours are (along with Sunday evenings) the busiest hours of the week, and the closing shift doesn't come in until 8:30 pm because of the longer hours on weekends. This particular Friday we had back luck with crew calling in sick. We actually had two people less for dinner rush than for the mid-afternoon.

Also on this particular Friday was the first school vacation weekend in Hamburg, Harley Days in Hamburg, and the first good weather in two weeks. Between 6 and 8 pm it was like getting rolled over with a steam roller. We literally had lines out the door, and I could only open 2 registers. The customers were patient and good natured, but we could have done a lot more business. Thanks to the good weather, most of them sat outside.

Good for us, most of our closers came early and punched in a quarter to eight. We then had 2 more registers, and could send 2 people to the lobby. Checking our hourly sales, we just missed our projection from 7 to 8 pm, but the PC said we had 4.5 too few crew. Considering that 4 people punched in at 7:45 pm, we were then at least five people short before they arrived. We had 9 plus me, we should have had 14.

Nico and Sibylle and family came in about 7:45 pm, just as things were starting to settle down. Other than the question "Is it always this full?" they seemed pleased with the service, and Frauke said that the picture Nico took of me "doesn't look all that bad" considering the previous two hours. Sibylle noted that the child seats don't have straps and it is too easy for an active toddler like Henri to crawl out. I'll pass that along to the boss. And maybe we can do a guided tour next time.

Google Saved Our Morning Coffee

2007-07-14T21:15:24+00:00

Now more than ever, our morning coffee is a vital necessity in order to start the day. So it was with no small amount of horror that we discovered yesterday that our Jura coffee machine would no longer produce coffee. The beans would grind, the water would pump, but only a few drops of hot brown elixir would trickle into our cups. No error message was displayed, and the problem persisted even after changing the water filter and running the cleaning program twice.

Then came Google to the rescue. Searching for "Jura selbst reparieren" (repair Jura yourself) brought up the site "Selber schrauben an Jura", where we found that a common problem (FAQ 15) is that the brew filter becomes clogged. It can be easily cleaned with your finger after reaching with your hand through the tray opening.

Now if Google would only brew the coffee for us every morning as well, it would be almost worth all the private data they are collecting from us.

Ten Days In

2007-07-11T20:24:47+00:00

Sorry for the relative silence here. Sixty-hour work weeks (40+ in the store plus office work at home) put a real crimp in your blogging. I can't really complain to my boss, though, she's working even more.

We're very happy with the first 10 days. We took over a wonderful crew and management team that is intelligent and motivated. We're investing our crew labor costs by increasing staffing on all shifts, and we're already seeing above-market sales increases. If you staff it, they will come.

We've been able to add 5 new employees to our crew of 39, but we need more (we're losing some crew when the new school year and apprenticeship terms start in August). And we need to start adding employees now for the sales increases we expect with McCafé in December.

On the personal side, what's new for us is that we need to coordinate our home life with Christopher. Once or twice a week we can bring him for a "shift" at the restaurant for an hour or two, but no more than that. Since I've worked home office the past 3 years, we have to readjust to the same problems all working parents face. For his part, Christopher has been very good about the sudden change in our routine. He's very excited about summer school vacation and our (his and mine) visit to Grandma and Grandpa in Minnesota in two weeks.

Here is Your Receipt

2007-07-09T19:54:28+00:00

Thank you, and stop by again!

Coming Soon

2007-07-04T09:51:28+00:00

We're still way too busy to catch our breaths, but I thought I'd show the "directional" sign we've commissioned. You'll see this when you drive into Buchholz on the Lüneburger Strasse, from Jesteburg. Since the McCafé won't be ready for a few months, we'll paste a "Coming in December" sticker over the McCafé logo. Hopefully it will raise some curiosity.

Since we'll see the sign every day when we drive to work, it will also serve as a quick shot of daily motivation.

First Day of "Work"

2007-07-01T11:51:50+00:00

Even though we got home at 3:30 this morning, Christopher insisted on going to the restaurant at 9:00 am for his first day of "work". We were actually already awake, I guess we can catch up on sleep later.

Christopher actually kept himself busy for nearly 3 hours. My CF card ate the rest of the photos I took today, but I was able to recover the thumbnails.

Our Name On The Door

2007-07-01T01:48:13+00:00

As of 2:15 this morning.

14 Hours

2007-06-30T08:08:05+00:00

Yesterday I thought it was funny that we'd have only one car for 24 hours (Frauke will borrow her mother's car until her Touran arrives). Not anymore. This morning as Frauke wanted to drive to the bakery, the Lupo refused to start. The engine catches, but when we release the key it cuts out after 1 or 2 seconds.

We're now waiting for the tow truck from our VW garage to arrive and to arrange a loaner car. This certainly puts a kink in our plans for today. :-(

Update: Just as I was to post this entry, the tow truck arrived with the loaner car on board. Our business has been saved!

Before...

2007-06-29T06:30:56+00:00

Today is Frauke's last official day as an employee, so she has to drop off her company Audi at the office.

McBier

2007-06-27T14:32:03+00:00

I finally have some time to answer some questions from the audience. I'll start with DaveP:

Are you going to have McBier?

The restaurant currently does sell beer (Bitburger in bottles), but we will be dropping it. Beer is a standard menu item in Germany, but it's a very low seller. We'd only sell 3 or 4 each day. The permit to sell beer costs 960 per year, so we didn't have to think very hard to decide that it was not worth it. Instead we will offer alcohol-free beer, which fits in better with the image we want to present anyway.

There's an Aral gas station across the street, and anyone who really wants beer would go there in the first place. They have better selection and don't pour the beer into a paper cup.

100 Hours

2007-06-26T19:32:02+00:00

We're now less than 100 hours away from owning a restaurant.

I worked 2 closing shifts over the weekend (until 5 and 3 am), then back at 11:30 on Monday (yes, DaveP, I have good shoes, from Ecco). Today I feel like I have transatlantic jet lag. But I know the layout of the store now and have met most of the crew.

I had forgotten it was Schutzenfest this weekend. After getting to bed at 5:30 Sunday morning, I was awakened at 7:30 by a marching band coming to honor the Ehrenkönig next door.

We've been busy checking and copying personnel files for our accountant to make sure we're ready for our first payroll at the end of July. Frauke also has to write employment contracts for the two of us, since legally we will be employees of the GmbH.

Today we took an initial equipment walkthrough with representatives of McDonald's, noting the condition of all equipment from top (roof A/C units) to bottom, inside and out. It didn't rain much.

The GmbH still isn't legal. A paragraph in the papers had to be changed, and the court in Tostedt seems to be in no hurry to approve it.

Between the stress and the return to physical work, I've lost 4 kg the past two weeks.

Training Day

2007-06-22T21:39:31+00:00

T-minus 8 days. The outgoing manager at our soon-to-be restaurant was gracious enough to allow me to work a few shifts behind the counter before we take over (with no monetary compensation, of course). I've been concentrating on the kitchen, since that's where the most changes have taken place since 1994, when I last ran a shift at a restaurant. I won't be running shifts full time, since my main priority is still a little boy who's about to finish the first grade, but I can fill in for late shifts during the week.

After two days I can say the changes in the kitchen are all for the better (especially being able to see orders as they are being placed), but after over a decade of desk work, I'm going to have to get used to being on my feet all day. Oh, my dogs are tired!

Johan! Johan! Johan!

2007-06-20T22:10:08+00:00

Ladies, gentlemen and children of all ages, reintroducing the reigning best pitcher in major league baseball, Mr. Johan Alexander Santana!

Censr at Flickr

2007-06-20T05:32:48+00:00

I've had my head down in work the past few days, with the old job winding down and the new business starting up. So at first I missed the shitstorm stirred up when Flickr (now owned by Yahoo!) added a German interface, and at the same time forced German users (along with those in Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea) to use SafeSearch, i.e. German users can now only view content considered safe.

German Flickr users were livid about the change, and the more so while it was first unexplained, then a couple of days later jusified with a vague "to comply with German law". Finally a reply from Heather Champ at Flickr revealed that "The central problem is that Germany has much more stringent age verification laws than its neighboring countries and specifies much harsher penalties, including jail time, for those with direct responsibility..."

As Heiko correctly points out, this isn't really censorship. Only governments can censor. Companies control access to their content however they want. But the photos on Flickr do not belong to Flickr or to Yahoo!, but to their users. Yahoo! chose to listen to their lawyers without even talking to their users (and they still aren't). Shelley always warned that with such services, when push comes to shove, the users will get the short end. Now we have a concrete example.

This is interesting on another level. Despite the global reach of the internet, even a global web company can trip over national customs and standards. For one thing, even though German law can be construed to imply that a online photo service faces criminal liability for their content, but in practice it has never happened. For another, given their historical experience with fascism, Germans are extremely sensitive to anything that reeks of control or censorship. And most Germans would consider American standards for decency and pornography to be absurd. Finally, German web sites use a standard for age-control that could easily be applied at Flickr, if necessary. It's called a credit card.

In short, Flickr and Yahoo! have proven themselves unreliable and unworthy of storing personal content, and German bloggers are leaving Flickr in droves. I, too, will be moving my photos elsewhere. Perhaps I will follow Cem's advice and try out the Danish service 23.

24/7

2007-06-18T08:22:43+00:00

The Shopblogger Björn Harste is taking advantage of the extended shopping hours in Bremen and is now opening his Spar supermarket 24 hours from Monday through Saturday. He blogged through the night his "first night out".

Of course for restaurants 24 hour opening is nothing new or special. We are already open until 3 am (4 am on weekends). We're considering going 24 hours ourselves (at least in the Drive-Thru), not so much for the sales as for daily maintenance and security. There's always something to clean.

Fun Fun Fun

2007-06-17T07:09:08+00:00

My wife's family decided a few years ago to combine all their birthday celebrations into 3 combined gatherings. All birthdays are pretty much clustered in November, February and May/June. So November we go to her older brother, in February to her younger brother, and in June they all come to us. That day is today, and we will have 14 guests in Chateau Lüllau.

We always plan an outdoor celebration, but our party is invariably on the coldest and wettest day of the summer. We're used to putting on sweaters and grilling in the carport. We may have better luck today... the temperature will be cool (18°C) rather than cold, and the showers will be scattered (rather than intense like the past couple of days). Since we have been occupied by other things the past few weeks, we didn't really start preparing until yesterday.

This year we have a new complication... Christopher came down with the stomach flu overnight, and is still feeling tough this morning. He's generally very healthy, he hasn't been sick for a year and a half. But now we have a child to comfort and extra loads of laundry along with the other preparations. It will be a long day... hopefully we can have *some* fun.

Caucasian

2007-06-17T05:54:03+00:00

In the "you're never too old to learn something new" department, I hadn't realized that the word caucasian to describe race come from an 18th century German scientist, and isn't used anymore outside of the US. Thanks to USA Erklärt, now I know.

I've grown weary of the whole American obsession with race, and I've gotten in the habit of ticking "other" when filling out forms that ask for my race (or, if I'm feeling ornery, writing in "none of your business").

Paper Weight

2007-06-15T19:13:34+00:00

I know I said I wouldn't blog numbers, I but think Frauke will forgive me for this one... her franchise contract arrived today by courier. With 4 copies of everything, with all appendices and conditions, the weight of the package was *2.6 kg*.

Since my name does not appear in the contract or in the papers for the GmbH, I could only watch as Frauke initialed and signed all the pages.

We Got The Money

2007-06-14T18:13:47+00:00

We got the money... and the papers, both yesterday.

Our financing came through yesterday. The rate is pretty much the same as the first offer, but the small print is better (repayment begins later, less insurance required). Best of all, the extra funds for the Gym & Fun are included.

We also got the notarized documents for the GmbH yesterday, which means we can register as a business *(Gewerbe)* with the city and start acting like a business, for example, open a bank account and start paying bills with company funds instead of our own.

Unfortunately we've gotten some rejections from employees who don't want to continue with us when we take over, so we're going to be a little short staffed for the first month. We've already interviewed a trainee we'd like to hire, and we'd love to hire a couple of *Azubis* (apprentices... in Germany gastronomy is a recognized trade) to start in August. In the meantime Frauke and I will be spending a lot of time in the restaurant. She's pencilled herself in for 32 shifts in July.

Birthday Present

2007-06-11T10:23:54+00:00

MamaMaus has her birthday today, and Christopher wanted to make her something special, something for the new restaurant. He decided on an "M" logo for her office... sure, she can get plenty of logos, but how many of them are hand-painted?

We made all the preparations on Saturday. We had to buy the cardboard, a tube of yellow paint, and a artist's palette. And since Mama has offices both at home and at work, he had to of course create two.

I was more practical in my gift selection. To help us adjust to our new lifestyle, I found a some books:

Die Kunst des stilvollen Verarmens. Wie man ohne Geld reich wird (The Art of Stylishly Becoming Poorer: How to Become Rich Without Money)
Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions.
Plus a book on Feng-Shui, to make sure we don't make any fatal mistakes when designing the McCafé.

Burger King Ignites Spam War With Rival

2007-06-11T07:53:05+00:00

Burger King Ignites Spam War With Rival... it's not what you might think, unless you are a fan of spiced ham in a can. :-)

Fashion for the Children of Heiligendamm

2007-06-04T18:56:55+00:00

Just in time for the G-8 protest season, Tchibo is offering basic designer black fashion perfect for demonstrators prone to violence. Also at Tchibo UK.

Speaking of which, is anyone outside of Germany paying attention to the violent protests in Rostock. Security for the G-8 conference is the main headline in Germany, but I have a feeling that elsewhere the protests are more of a dog-bites-man story... it would only be newsworthy if there were no violent protests.

The Blueberry Hercules

2007-05-31T07:12:32+00:00

Frauke found an an interview "Der Blueberry-Herkules" at focus.de with Martin Coles, President of Starbucks Coffee International, on Starbucks slow entry into the German market...

Germany is a great market for us. All of our coffee houses are profitable. We sell a premium product, and the guests are willing to pay the appropriate price.... There's a lot of room for growth here. No country drinks more coffee than Germany. We will continually expand. This year we will open more than 30 new locations.

I guess that means he's satisfied with a low number of premium locations, and won't be really competing with Tchibo or McCafé for market share.

BTW, the title refers to the fact that the best selling product at Starbucks is not coffee, it's the blueberry muffin.

Shock and Awe

2007-05-31T06:01:27+00:00

One rule I've been following when blogging about our new business is "no numbers"... which is too bad, since the numbers are the second-most fun part of the business (but not nearly as much fun as the people you work with). If you're really curious, you can check at mcdonalds.de things like the average annual sales per restaurant or how much equity is required to become a franchisee.

Yesterday we got our first formal financing offer, and it was somewhat breathtaking to see the monthly payment in black and white. It's one thing to have a line in your projected P&L for debt service, it's quite another to have a concrete payment schedule with a payment that well exceeds our former gross salaries. Then the enormity of our undertaking becomes clear.

Then you blink a couple of times, look at the plan again, and wonder if you're getting a good rate. Maybe the second offer will be a tenth of a percent cheaper...

T Minus 5 Weeks

2007-05-28T16:10:49+00:00

Five weeks from yesterday we go officially into business. We're making continual progress... financing, staffing, and remodeling plans are on track, but not yet set. Today we looked at the newly remodeled restaurant in Bispingen with a "Gym and Fun", 30 sq. m indoor activity area with basketball hoop and padded obstacle course. Christopher was very impressed, and we'd love to have one too. We'll see what the architect (and the bank) have to say.

We've been trying to think of a title for me, someone who does a little of everything as needed, but is not the boss. Today we came up with "General Manager". Now I can finally order business cards. :-)

Frauke works nights this week with equipment maintenance and monthly reports on her training schedule. Hopefully Christopher won't wake us up at 6:45 like he did this morning.

Pfingstsingen

2007-05-27T08:02:33+00:00

They were lucky, the rain let up this morning. More pictures of the wagon.

Bolle took a trip for Pentecost

2007-05-26T18:51:09+00:00

I've mentioned Pfingstsingen a few times here, when (separate) groups of boys and girls go house to house on Pentecost Sunday and sing, expecting sweets or some money in return. The tradition is kept alive here in Lüllau... while we've heard of young men bringing a Pfingstbaum in other towns, but nowhere else with kids.

Since Christopher is now in school, he gets to participate this year (in fact, he's an honorary door ringer... I think that's called the Pfingstbock or Pfingstpfost). They've practiced 4 or 5 times and today decorated a wagon where they can deposit their loot. They're also packing water pistols, in case they happen to cross paths with the girls' group.

He's also had to learn the song "Bolle reiste jüngst zu Pfingsten", an old children's song. I never paid much attention to the lyrics. It's in dialect, but I found a modern explanation. Let's just say that it would never pass the censors these days... child neglect, alcohol abuse, knife fights, domestic violence, and finally suicide. Tipper Gore would have field day.

2007-05-26T07:58:21+00:00

Hal remembers that 30 years ago this weekend:

The movie Star Wars (AKA: Star Wars: A New Hope) opened in theaters across the country and set the record for the largest grossing film to date. In my mind, which seldom accounts for much, there are only real three Star Wars movies called Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. None of them have the prefix Star Wars:.

He also has a link to the original review in the New York Times: Star Wars A Trip to a Far Galaxy Thats Fun and Funny.

Christopher is, shall we say, intensely familiar with both trilogies and contributes most of his allowance money to Lego for their line of Star Wars sets.

As for me, Star Wars was my second favorite movie while in high school. The movie that most entertained and inspired me as teenager came out a year later... Animal House.

New Look

2007-05-25T10:04:49+00:00

~~New~~ Less hair, no beard.

Karen King McDonald's Ad

2007-05-25T05:12:49+00:00

The McDonald's Corporate Responsibility blog links to this commercial (direct link) currently running in the US, featuring the career of Karen King, President of McDonald's USA East Division. This could also have been Frauke's career, except she she started a few years later and thankfully missed out on the lime green crew uniform phase.

</embed>

Mainstream

2007-05-24T15:56:06+00:00

You know blogging has become mainstream when the closing down of a blog hits a major daily newspaper.

Batgirl was a somewhat different sports blog with "less stats, more sass". I'll miss it.

Alternative Sentencing

2007-05-24T10:20:14+00:00

Does the sentence fit the crime?

In Hildesheim, the founder of Heros, once Germany's leading money transport company, was convicted (along with 3 managers) of embezzling half a billion Euros over 2 decades, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In Atanta, a former secretary for Coca-Cola was convicted of conspiring to sell trade secrets to Pepsi for $1.5 million, and was sentenced to 8 years in prison (longer than was recommended by the prosecution).

Bergedorf

2007-05-23T04:18:28+00:00

"At the McDrive a dream came true": Newspaper article on the opening of McDrive restaurant in Hamburg-Bergedorf, 1991

Uptown

2007-05-22T19:39:23+00:00

Uptown Minneapolis McDonald's, 1986(?)

For Want of a Nail

2007-05-22T16:05:05+00:00

We've known for months that MamaMaus would have to give up her company car, and we've known for months that we would replace it with a VW CrossTouran. It's roomy inside, and has a lot of surface area for company logos. We can also take advantage of the fleet rebate by ordering through McDonald's. We just had to wait until the firm was officially formed before placing the order.

We got the paperwork for the GmbH back today, and MamaMaus called the fleet coordinator to say that the order could now be placed. "Great," she said, "I'll just need you to send back a paper copy with your signature and company stamp, then we can send in the order."

Company rubber stamp? We just ordered it today as well, delivery takes 14 days. Noone told us we'd need a stamp immediately. Looks like we'll pick up an instant stamp from Staples and somehow add a logo to it. The Touran is going to take 9 weeks as it is.

On a related note, MamaMaus ordered business cards for herself, but not for me because we don't know what title I should have. "Co-debtor" probably does not give a good impression.

Update 23 May 2007

That Means You, Uri

2007-05-22T05:39:49+00:00

Everyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand. </p>

(stolen and translated from treehugginpussy)

I Am An Eagle!

2007-05-22T02:36:03+00:00

This morning is the big meeting with the bank. In the middle of preparing her presentation, MamaMaus came storming into the living room. "I am an eagle!" she cried, which confused Christopher to no end. But if it helps to convince the Deutsche Bank, she can be whatever she wants.

Eagles work alone, so the vulture will stay home at the nest and cross his fingers.

SethBlog in Europe

2007-05-22T02:30:38+00:00

I've enjoyed following along with Seth and Holly's trip to Paris and London at SethBlog (starting with D-Day for their departure up to Leaving London for their flight back home). I think it was their first trip to Europe, and it was interesting to re-experience looking at Europe through Midwestern eyes. It seems like they spent quite a lot of time looking for Iowa-compatible food (scroll to Tip #5).

On the other hand, we've been in Germany for 17 years, and (except to change planes at CDG or Heathrow), we've never been to Paris or London. So you can't call us cosmopolitan either.

Homepage

2007-05-20T06:53:15+00:00

"Homepage" is one of those Anglicisms that has snuck into German and means something slightly different than it does in English. It's not quite as obtuse as "handy", which in English isn't even a noun, but is a bit confusing nonetheless. A German "Homepage" refers to an entire website, and not just the start page as one might think.

Whatever... our business now has a homepage in both senses of the word, since right now it's only a single dummy page. But it's never too early to start building up Google juice. Check it out at http://mcdonalds-nordheide.de/.

We've decided to start small with the site design. You might recognize it as the K2 template for WordPress. We've looked at a lot of local McDonald's sites (here and here are two examples). We considered using a professional design (especially considering that I'm "chromatically challenged"). However I do have a business partner with a good sense of taste and style and the communication skills to get those across, even to me. At this stage, it's more important for the site to be clear and current than to have a "flashy" design.

Using WordPress as a CMS also fits in our "less is more" strategy for non-essential expenses, particularly for IT. WordPress has enough features for a small site (particularly "pages" and being able to set a "front page"). Should we outgrow it, we can always scale up later (as opposed to investing time and money now on something too big for our needs).

Now we need to start working on content...

Hamburg's Coffee Mile

2007-05-19T09:28:32+00:00

Today's Abendblatt has an article on Hamburg's Coffee Mile on Grindelalle near the University, where 18 coffee shops are located on a 700 meter stretch. None of them are Starbucks. (None of them is a McCafé, either.)

The largest shop seems to be Balzac Coffee, which has 15 coffee shops in Hamburg, and according the Abendblatt they are planning on opening 15 more this year. Vanessa Kullmann, the founder of Balzac, has just written a book "Keine große Sache" telling how she started up. MamaMaus received it as a gift as an inspiration for her new business.

(I think there are 4 Starbucks in Hamburg, but I'm not sure, and the store locator on their website can't find any.)

Rocket Revisited

2007-05-17T19:49:49+00:00

Just to follow up on our uncanny sense of timing in the stock market, 5 weeks after exercising a large (for us) number of McDonald's stock options at $46.45, today the stock is selling at over $52. I told you that would happen, it's your own fault if you missed out on the boom.

In other news, MamaMaus is giving up the first trappings of her life as a jet-set executive. She still has the car and the laptop with VPN access. The first thing she had to give back was the Blackberry.

Yesterday she was in her power suit at the notary and the bank to set up the GmbH. Today she was in a crew uniform working grill and fries on her first day of in-restaurant training (no, not in Dibbersen, at a company restaurant in Hamburg). Yes, her hands smell like ketchup and pickle juice, just like the good old days. Tomorrow she'll be in drive-thru. And, no, I can't get too haughty, my own re-training will begin in about 6 weeks. :-)

im in ur serverz

2007-05-16T21:02:34+00:00

This seems to be Twitter's maintenance graphic, as opposed to a plumber or a massage. Lolcats must be the new black.

The Problem With No

2007-05-16T09:03:16+00:00

Cem just pointed me to the blog USA Erklärt which attempts to explain in German certain things about the USA. When I saw the entry on Why Americans Don't Say What They Really Mean, I was struck by the passage

For example, it is considered crude to say "no" directly, therefore something else will be said that every Anglo-Saxon will understand as "no", but does not use the word "no".

I was bitten by this a couple of weeks ago. A couple days before the May Day bridge day, MamaMaus was on the phone with her sister-in-law and they thought it would be a great idea to invite their kids to visit Christopher that day, even though I had to work. I didn't think of much of MamaMaus volunteering my time as a babysitter, and would have much rather taken Christopher to the park or a movie or something, so I told her "no" as directly as I could:

I really don't know what I would do with them.

This was of course interpreted as "he would love for them to come", and thus I was reminded (once again) that to say no to a German you pretty much have to use a two by four with applied centrifugal force. The kids came on Monday, they were bored, I was bored, pretty much as expected. Next time I'll try to remember to be more direct.

Dibbersen/Buchholz

2007-05-15T17:21:23+00:00

Now that official notice of the upcoming change in ownership has been posted in the restaurant, I am proud to announce that the first location of the Frauke Petersen-Hanson Systemgastronomie GmbH i.G. will be located at **Harburger Str. 19 in Dibbersen/Buchholz**, on the Autobahn A1 between Bremen and Hamburg. For us the restaurant is just 10 minutes drive from home.

The restaurant with McDrive was opened in 2003 and does not yet have a McCafé. It is located near a thriving commercial area with the furniture store Möbel Kraft and a new Obi home improvement store. A Famila supermarket and a MediaMarkt electronics store are planned for this year. We have every reason to expect satisfaction and success for years to come.

**Update:** MamaMaus has a soft spot for signage. This will be ours.

Concrete

2007-05-12T06:38:32+00:00

Our plans for taking over the restaurant on 1 July are slowing becoming concrete.

MamaMaus' last day of work at the office is Monday. On Tuesday she begins in-store training (at a company restaurant, not our future location). Her employment officially ends on 30 June.
The papers for the GmbH will be signed on Wednesday. The tax advisor says we don't need the 'Co KG', so we're skipping it.
Written notice of the change in ownership will be posted at the restaurant on Monday, and a formal employee meeting is scheduled a week later. At that point I can say here where we will be located (but if you ask me by mail, I'll tell you).
The franchise contract (over 2 cm thick) arrived by courier yesterday, so we now have a final purchase price that can be signed and sent back.

Update 15 May 2007: MamaMaus was afraid the tone of this post would be misunderstood, so it's been edited to more accurately reflect our true feelings of giddiness and excitement.

Why Franchisees Fail

2007-05-11T07:21:55+00:00

Last week in the Wall Street Journal there was a nice article on Why Franchisees Fail (subscribers only, but a copy is here). Even with an established system you can still screw up royally.

Weathering unexpected situations without a financial cushion can be problematic even for an established franchise. Ed Moran, an accountant in Tucson, Ariz., recalls a McDonalds Corp. franchisee whose dominance of a small California community was suddenly challenged by the arrival of a competing burger restaurant. The first year, the rival knocked 30% off the McDonalds stores sales. Unwilling to scale back on his lifestyle, the McDonalds franchisee instead reduced his labor overhead and raised prices. He went into a spiral and never came out, Mr. Moran says.

Unwilling to scale back on his lifestyle... that sounds like an epitaph rather than a sound business strategy. (In our business plan we still break even with a 20% sales drop.)

At Your Service

2007-05-11T04:47:31+00:00

Yesterday we attended the wedding of our good friends Heidi and Robert. The catering crew graciously allowed Christopher to assist serving drinks to the guests. He took this responsibility quite seriously and performed quite well.

The wedding was held at the historic windmill in Buchholz-Dibbersen. We didn't even know there was a windmill in Dibbersen, even though we drive through all the time to get to the Autobahn A1. We were very impressed with the location, and we might be back since we have a small celebration to plan for September 2008.

Bring Her Back!

2007-05-09T20:58:37+00:00

When someone as fervent as Jörg Kantel announces he is about to renounce his political party, it's worth the time to read his reasons (English translation is mine):

In early March Berlin's Interior Senator Ehrhart Körting (SPD) allowed a young women to be deported to Turkey who is not Turkish and does not speak Turkish. Nasima El-Zein grew up in Berlin, graduated from Realschule, helped foreign schoolchildren as a volunteer in the problem neighborhood of Neukölln, helped them with math and German. Who came up with the idea to deport this woman to a land where a violent father awaits to lock her up and send her to a forced marriage? Today the Berliner Zeitung wrote that the Kurdish woman has been pressured by the Turkish police, and threatened with violence. I think not only the behavior of the Turkish authorities, but also that of Berlin's Interior Senator, to be a scandal. One can only suspect that because the police and the authorities are unable to handle a few wild Turkish-Lebanese families in Neukölln and Rudow, the so-called "bouncer mafia", that they are making an example of this young woman, making a scapegoat of someone who is integrated and cannot defend herself, deporting her to Turkey simply to quiet public opinion.

These actions from Hr. Körting are not only reprehensible, but also violate the principles of his party, the SPD, and human rights... As a party member, I will formally request the expulsion of Hr. Körting from the party. And when the young woman has not returned to Berlin by the end of May 2007, I will take my party book, which documents over 35 years of membership in the SPD, and publicly burn it (i.e. a video will be posted here) and I will urge my fellow party members to do the same.

Jörg himself lives in Neukölln, so I'm sure he knows what he's talking about. I've heard of some wild deportation cases in Germany, but this seems to rank with the wildest of them.

Shrek on a diet in McDonald's Happy Meal gig

2007-05-09T05:30:15+00:00

Reuters, Shrek on a diet in McDonald's Happy Meal gig:

On Tuesday, McDonald's and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., the studio behind the upcoming "Shrek the Third" movie, unveiled a promotion in which Shrek, Donkey and other characters from the animated film will be used to sell Happy Meals and other McDonald's food.

But unlike previous movie tie-ins, McDonald's will use Shrek to feature its salads, milk, apple slices and other products ... A Happy Meal with Apple Dippers, all-white-meat chicken McNuggets, and low-fat milk will be featured in television commercials and on posters in McDonald's restaurants. Shrek will also appear on packaging for the milk and apples.

While the apples, milk, salads and other featured products have been on McDonald's menu for more than a year, Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon said the company still had "opportunities to drive awareness both with parents and kids about these offerings."

Good! It's one thing to add healthy products to the menu, it's another thing to actually put marketing money behind them.

Cynics might say that McDonald's is only responding to "mounting criticism its food was not only unhealthy, but also contributing to the increase in overweight kids in the United States". I would say that McDonald's is responding to consumer demand, which I guess amounts to the same thing.

Fetch, Doggie, Fetch!

2007-05-08T20:24:24+00:00

Cem passed on this questionaire to me. For some reason, in German these questionaires are called a Stöckchen, a stick you throw for a dog to fetch. So I'm obediently picking up the stick...

Do you use social bookmarking/networking sites like Digg, Yigg, Mister Wong or Del.Icio.Us? I use del.icio.us, but not regularly. It's much easier to share links on Google Reader.

Do you watch videos at portals like YouTube, Sevenload or DailyMotion an? Not really, I find the written word more interesting than moving pictures.

Do you know of or use Flickr? I use Flickr only as an image store. I don't use any of the social features.

What do you think of services like Twitter or Frazr? I don't know yet. I've tried Twitter, but I don't get it.

How many RSS feeds do you subscribe to? 322 at the moment.

Do you read them all daily? No. I have my feeds grouped by priority, some to read immediately, some to read daily, and some to check when I have the chance.

How many blogs do you write for (own or as co-author)? Only one. I've tried starting a second blog for non-personal topics, but found it too schizophrenic.

Do you comment in other blogs? Not as often as I would like.

Who is your personal Blog King of Germany? I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective. (source)

Do you think weblogs belong to the futures, or are they just a temporary hype? I've been "blogging" in one form or another since I was 16 years old. Back then I used a typewriter and a mimeograph, now I use the internet. It's just a medium.

Will you blog be a part of that future? I will be writing in some form or another.

Are we alone in the Universe? Does it matter? Knowing for sure one way or the other wouldn't change me or my life at all.

Who's next to answer these questions? Whoever is brave enough to try.

webzweinulljobs.de

2007-05-08T07:14:40+00:00

Nico has yet another new project, namely a technical job board entitled webzweinulljobs.de, born from his experience how difficult it is to find good administrators and developers. I say that anything that keeps him from making more recruitment videos is a good idea.

The funny thing is that my job at Media Ventures is listed, and I don't even meet the qualifications anymore (I don't know the right firewall). Do you think they are trying to tell me something?

Flash Slideshow with Captions

2007-05-08T06:39:04+00:00

As a kind of wedding present for our former Tagesmutter, I helped her set up a web site http://www.heidi-ritter.de/ to promote her child care business. However, I've kind of developed myself into a hole.

I set up the design using RapidWeaver, a nice website creation tool for OS X. I choose it mostly because there are some nice ready-made design templates available (I'm colorblind, and can't match colors to save my life) but also because I knew there was an add-in to enable Heidi to edit her site online.

However, we ended up deciding to use photo galleries instead of straight web pages, telling her story with pictures instead of words (for example, her Schwerpunkte page). RapidWeaver can produce static photo galleries, but they can't be edited with the online tool. And since she doesn't have a Mac, I can't simply install RapidWeaver for her. So now I'm stuck.

Yesterday I played with the slide show creator at [slide.com](http://www.slide.com/), and it's almost what I want. It creates a Flash slideshow with captions (see my test slideshow with the Schwerpunkte photos). It's editable online, and it's quite easy to add pictures, change text, and rearrange the order. It would be nice to be have more control over the speed and text format, and I don't need links to the original pictures. Another possibility would be a Windows application so Heidi can create an maintain her slideshows locally. There are a number of free and commercial possibilities, but I haven't started exploring yet.

I'm thinking that an embedded Flash applet would be nice since then I can put the site into a mini-CMS like Wordpress, and I only have to design the main pages and not a separate gallery as well.

So I'll put the question to the audience. Do you have any ideas on how I can best include a set of pictures on a small commercial site that's easy to edit and maintain?

2007-05-07T09:05:21+00:00

MamaMaus was sent a trade magazine article on McCafé in Germany (PDF, 770K, in German) that she wanted to share. It explains the concept (coffee shop atmosphere with the convenience and value of McDonald's) and some of the details of operation.

Our soon-to-be restaurant does not have a McCafé yet, but we want one as quickly as we can and our it's included in our financial planning for this year. Maybe it will look something like this (design concept Generation Wenge)...

Corrupted UTF-8 characters with PHP and MySQL

2007-05-05T04:58:19+00:00

Someone recently asked me about corrupted characters in a PHP-MySQL project. They had recent stable versions of everything, MySQL 5.0 and PHP 5.1, using UTF-8 for everything, and they were getting corrupted accented characters saved in the database, junk with 'Ã's was coming out. They were asking me if there were perhaps some secret PHP setting they were missing to make things right. Not that I knew of.

I would have thought that in this day and age using UTF-8 with PHP and MySQL would just work. To try this out for myself, I downloaded some simple tutorial code, set up databases and HTML with UTF-8, and started creating records with names like Scött Hänsön and Mäcky Möüße. And sure enough, I got junk.

PHP and MySQL don't just work with UTF-8. In particular, the client connection from PHP to MySQL defaults to latin1. There don't seem to be any PHP settings to change this. On the MySQL side there are 'default-character-set' settings you can put in various sections of the my.cnf, but for me they didn't seem to help.

I found two ways to solve the problem. The first is to issue a mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8') immediately after every mysql_connect to manually switch the connection to utf8. That's a huge pain if you have a lot of code (even in my mini 5-file test-case I forgot one instance at first).

The other is to add a init-connect='SET NAMES utf8' setting to the [mysqld] section of my.cnf. init-connect automatically executes SQL commands at the beginning of every client connection. The catch is the commands won't be executed for a user with SUPER privileges, so if you're lazy and using 'root' to connect to your database, it won't work.

By using various combinations of <meta charset="blah"/> in the HTML and SET NAMES for the database connection, you can create interesting errors. The 'Ã' errors seem to occur when correctly sent utf-8 is incorrectly saved over a latin1 connection, then read back out as utf-8. My friend said he was using SET NAMES 'utf8' with all his connects, I'm guessing he forgot it for INSERTs and UPDATEs. That's just a hunch.

I wasn't able to find a clear explanation of this in Google (the closest was in the comments to mysql_client_encoding() in the PHP documentation), so I thought write this up here. It's clear to me, at least.

Top 7 Things System Administrators Forget to Do

2007-05-03T18:46:44+00:00

O'Reilly Net: Top 7 Things System Administrators Forget to Do. I'll admit to being guilty of all of these at some time or another, but I try especially hard to avoid number 7:

Forgetting Courtesy

If you want support from management, consider remembering that the user you offend today could wind up on the board of directors. Regardless of that possibility, system administrators should always remember that their clients are internal and if you want to keep your job, be good to your clients.

We can be smart and help people without being arrogant. It's more fun that way.

Help

2007-05-02T15:48:31+00:00

iSquint's help menu (via Signal vs. Noise, which adds: "Note: Probably not that funny if you actually need help.").

09-F9-11-02-M-O-U-S-E

2007-05-02T10:17:04+00:00

If you're wondering what all this 09-F9 stuff is about, it has something to do with DVDs. And freedom of information on the internet. Or something like that.

Shop Til You Drop

2007-04-30T19:53:10+00:00

The regulation of shopping hours in Germany is now a matter for the states rather than the federal government, and most states have taken the opportunity to deregulate shopping hours Monday through Saturday. Here in Niedersachsen the deregulation took effect this month, and our local Rewe supermarket is now open until 9:00 pm 6 days a week. We've taken advantage of the extra hour a few times already.

When we came to Germany the restricted shopping hours was the biggest thing I had to get used to. Back then shops closed at 6:30 pm during the week and 2:00 pm on Saturday. But the times have become longer and longer, first until 8:00 pm on weekdays, and then 8:00 pm every Saturday. Now it's a non-issue, and I imagine that sooner or later Sunday closing will also be a thing of the past.

Lead the World

2007-04-30T06:23:11+00:00

Which American politician just said:

America must "lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good."

Germans who haven't been following the US presidential race that closely might be surprised. (via John Robb)

Back to Back

2007-04-29T17:40:14+00:00

In case you're wondering about my back (my last real update was in February), things are going pretty well. I've been pain-free since the beginning of March, although I do feel some tension or tiredness in my lower back from time to time. I've been going to a physiotherapist (my next-door neighbor), and she's been teaching me the basics... how to sit, how to stand, last week I tried walking.

Last week I started a 8-week training course at a local fitness studio. They have a set of machines from Dr. Wolff to train the upper and lower back. The cost is covered by health insurance, and since we are supposed to work out on our own between sessions, it works out like a trial membership.

The best part is that since the initial injection at the beginning of January, I've taken absolutely no pain medication. I no longer have the TENS device (it was more a nuisance than a help), and I'm not taking any more chiropractic treatments.

My therapist (er, my neighbor) would like me to ergonomically optimize my workplace. Since I'm about to switch jobs, I'm not sure where my new workplace is going to be. I guess I'll have to work that out with my new boss.

McDonald's on Sabine Christiansen Tonight

2007-04-29T11:07:35+00:00

Tonight's Sabine Christiansen talk show on ARD is on the topic of obesity, and among the guests is Wolfgang Goebel, Vice President for Operations for McDonald's Deutschland (and, for a few more days, MamaMaus' boss).

We're no big fans of Christiansen, but her show is the best known talk show on German television. We usually don't stay up until 21:45 on Sunday nights, but tonight we might make an exception. I do suspect, though, that the producers deliberately chose a soft topic for the holiday weekend.

Bridge Days

2007-04-28T06:45:22+00:00

While admiring the new design of the website for Christopher's school (looks like somebody has a Web 2.0 logo generator) a couple of days, I thought I'd check the the list of school holidays. When we put up paper calendars for 2007, we didn't write in the school holidays since we're still new at this school parenting business.

Sure enough there are some holidays coming up that we didn't plan for. The first is this coming Monday, the Day before May Day. This seems to be a sporadic holiday only celebrated when May Day falls on a Tuesday. We're totally unprepared... we not only have no plans, we didn't even take the day off from work. In our defense, my sister-in-law who has two kids in Gymnasium didn't know about it either, although the logistics of leaving 7th graders at home is a bit easier than for a 1st grader.

The next unexpected holiday was not so unexpected, the Day after Ascension. Ascension only falls on Thursday, and the next day must be the most unproductive work day on the German calendar. That the schools are also closed is then logical.

Finally there's a holiday that's totally new for us, Pentecost Tuesday (would that be Whittues in BrE)? In our years in Germany, we've never noticed that the kids go back to school a day later after the Pentecost weekend, probably because we've never had a kid in school.

So along with Report Card Vacation celebrated in February, we have a number of new holidays that we will be celebrating for the next 10 or 13 years (whichever the case may be). Note that these holidays are regionally variable. The schoolkids in Hamburg, for example, celebrate a yearly Ski Vacation, even though there is no place in Hamburg to ski.

Cat's Out of the Bag

2007-04-27T16:06:48+00:00

Nico's confirmed the rumor, he's coming back to Hamburg to lead a new startup called Shoppero. And here I was all set to start a counter-rumor that he was really coming to Hamburg to start working for us.

I did some initial systems consulting for the project (OK, it was more like "Can you set up a server for us?" "Sure, no problem."), so I've been in on the secret. And note that they have a .com domain rather than .de. Their plans for world domination are not limited to the German-speaking world.

Another tidbit: the project has been blogging under a code name in English for several weeks, but the rumormongers don't seem to have found it yet. :-)

American Power Conversion Kit

2007-04-27T07:13:58+00:00

After seeing Nicole's useless universal power plug that she bought at Heathrow (it doesn't work with German plugs), I thought I'd show our power conversion kit that we bring on all our trips to the States.

These jobbies cost me 1.50 each at Karstadt a few years ago. You'll notice that we dremeled out the safety tabs on one of them so we can insert cords that normally require grounding. Yes, these adapters are just like a Corvair, unsafe at any speed!

These adapters don't converte the voltage, of course. We only bring along devices that work with 110 volts.

Combined with a German 3-socket power strip and our Hardware Hank UL-listed extension cord (not shown), we're ready for anything.

Corruption and Locusts

2007-04-27T03:33:01+00:00

One the one hand, here it is currently en vogue to complain about amoral American hedge funds, comparing them to locusts. Today on NDR Info I heard about the shareholders' meeting of Cewe Color. Its hedge fund shareholders are demanding the resignation of the CEO and a special debt-financed dividend for shareholders (i.e. themselves).

On the other hand, this week Klaus Kleinfeld resigned as chairman of Siemens. A big factor in his resignation was apparently the tougher corporate ethics regulation in the US, which applies to Siemens since it is listed on the NYSE.

I'm confused now about which country has the more moral corporations.

Fast Food Geography

2007-04-26T17:00:00+00:00

Cem sent us this link about fast food markets in the US. The map shows the cities with the highest and lowest number of fast food meals per capita per month. Do I detect a geographical pattern here?

I wonder what the numbers for Germany would look like... not just fast-food chains, of course, but also including Currywurst, Döner, Brathähnchen and Fischbrötchen.

Rock 'n' Roll High School

2007-04-24T14:36:05+00:00

Gabba gabba hey, now here's a classic film. I'm old enough that I actually saw this in a theatre!

Hmm, judging from the price at Amazon it might have been cheaper to buy than to rent.

Jura XF50

2007-04-24T05:05:10+00:00

Back in 2003 I posted on the folly of spending 100s of Euros on a coffee machine and that we were happy with our cheapy plastic machine where we did everything by hand. In the meantime the plastic machine went out, and we switched to a metal machine from AEG where we still did everything by hand.

Last December at one of MamaMaus' meetings in Munich all mid-managers got a heavy box approximately 50 cm on all sides (like a Dell box folded in half). She didn't even try to take it on the plane with her, she had it shipped to her office. Then it barely fit in her car to bring home. It was a Christmas present, a full-automatic Jura Impressa XF50 espresso machine.

It's a commercial machine, just like the retail F50 but in black. What we used to lovingly assemble, brew and clean every day was now available at the touch of a button. We got used to the convenience rather quickly. Our daily joke in the morning is now "Can I make you a cup of coffee". Since it's absolutely no effort anymore, it's not that much of a favor.

It's quite large, luckily we have a dead corner on the kitchen counter that it fills up quite nicely. We were afraid that it would be as hard to set up as a video recorder, but it was actually quite easy, and once set up you can pretty much forget it. It even shuts itself off when it's not been used for a few hours. Just do what the screen tells you to do. Fill water, fill beans, empty tray (for water and used grounds). You'll want to rinse out the tray daily, though, if you don't want nasties to grow in it. We use the optional water filters, so we don't have to decalc, instead changing the filter every 2 months. The screen even tells you when to clean. We've done that twice since Christmas, dropping in a tablet and running water through. The filters and tablets are not that expensive, you can get them at Media Markt or on eBay.

After 4 months with the Jura we're quite happy with it. We still probably wouldn't spend the 800 on it ourselves, but it's a nice luxury to have, and we would miss it if we now had to do without.

Sweater

2007-04-21T08:03:14+00:00

Today is closet cleaning day. Everything that hasn't been worn for a year will be considered for the Altkleidersammlung. Items with sentimental value are however excluded.

MamaMaus made this as my Christmas present in 1982 (or was it 1981?). I know there are a few knitting fans among my readers.

There's no danger of PapaScott becoming a knitting blog, though. MamaMaus hasn't touched a knitting needle in nearly 25 years.

Knut Wochen

2007-04-21T07:57:28+00:00

No, Knutmania has not come to this, not yet (via ChrisNux, who has some more examples).

T-Shirt

2007-04-20T16:23:47+00:00

Grandma sent Christopher this cool Lilo and Stitch T-Shirt, but it was too big. So we had it altered. Now it fits.

PS: Christopher would like a certain Star Wars model as a late Easter present.

GmbH und Co KG

2007-04-19T06:30:42+00:00

We have a name. And a sign. McDonald's doesn't want franchisees to use 'Mc' or any trademarks or product names when naming their companies, so fun names like 'McMaus' are out. So we've gone for something boring and practical. And yes, we know the sign has typos. It's just a first draft.

Meanwhile MamaMaus has visited a consultant and a bookkeeping service (husband and wife, actually), has been to two banks and the local *Wirtschaftsförderung* (business development) office, and has appointments next week with a lawyer and a tax advisor. Meanwhile she's still working on showing her successor around the region, taking day trips to places like Kiel, Göttingen, Braunschweig and Oldenburg. The handover will take another 3 weeks or so.

We're still waiting for a franchise contract and a concrete purchase price. MamaMaus has negotiated such sales in the past, though, so we have a good a idea how much it will be. And we've got our first bit of capital sitting liquid in a cash management account.

Lectures about Guns

2007-04-18T19:45:25+00:00

In the wake of the shootings in at Virginia Tech, there have been the usual comments in the German media about the lack of gun control laws in the US. I can think of a few ways to point the finger back here.

The largest employer in my wife's home town is Sauer & Sohn, "Germany's oldest's gun manufacturer" since 250 years.
In 2006 there were nearly 350,000 registered hunters in Germany
Where we live, the main social club in most towns is the Schützenverein, or shooting club. The biggest social event of the year is the Schützenfest, where shooting is combined with alcohol. The Schützenfest in Hannover can be compared with the Oktoberfest in Munich or the Dom in Hamburg.
When we just moved here I was told I could make big money smuggling trigger mechanisms from the US into Germany. Gun fans in Germany could import non-functional weapons from the US, but the mechanisms were not so easy to get.
It seems every few months there is a gun accident involving children here, almost always involving a legal but unlocked gun from a parent. The US National Rifle Association may be a gun lobby, but they also teach basic gun safety, which includes keeping one's guns locked when stored.

As usual, Andrew at German Joys makes the point much more logically than I ever could. Lax gun laws in the US make life slighty unsafer than in Europe, but only slightly. It's not enough to get on your high horse.

Most Socially Responsible?

2007-04-18T04:46:50+00:00

Quick Serve Kids: Quick-Serves Most Socially Responsible?

In a recent study of U.S. consumer attitudes toward corporate social responsibility in foodservice, Technomic found that restaurant users rated health insurance coverage, living wages and animal welfare as their top three concerns, when asked to select among 14 different issues.

In general, consumers believe restaurant chains could do more to address their high priority social issues. The chains that consumers view as being most socially responsible are McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, Subway, Starbucks and Applebees.

Interesting that healthy menu and obesity weren't among the top issues. It is also interesting that in Germany corporate responsibility seems to be a non-issue. Corporations are assumed to be irresponsible, and any effort to demonstrate social responsibility is dismissed as a PR gag. Or am I wrong?

I Told You So

2007-04-16T23:46:07+00:00

After we exercised options last week at $46.45, the price of MCD has shot up on better than expected 1Q earnings. Today MCD closed at $48.10. I knew something like that would happen.

If you want to plan to profit from our poor market timing, our next option package is exercisable at the end of May.

Sex and Drugs

2007-04-16T20:49:00+00:00

First I find out that sex education doesn't make any difference for adolescent sexual behavior. Teenagers don't have sex any later, or are any more likely to use birth control... in other words, all sex education is useless, whether abstinence-based or not. (That makes sense to me, sex education was one of the most boring subjects in junior high, and turned out to be of no practical use.)

Then I find out that drinking age also makes no difference. The US (along with Indonesia, Mongolia and Palau) has the highest drinking age in the world, yet "high school students in much of the rest of the developed world where lower drinking ages and laxer enforcement reign do considerably better than US students on standardized tests".

Next they'll tell me that rock and roll does not cause brain damage in mice. Then the destruction of all my adolescent myths will be complete.

Rails is an ogre, and ogres have layers

2007-04-16T15:27:23+00:00

Mark Pilgrim: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Rails Developer David Heinemeier Hanssons Response to Alex Paynes Interview

(Disclaimer: My employer is about to deplay its first Rails application, and we admins are somewhat apprehensive about the performance implications.)

Euro License

2007-04-15T18:48:35+00:00

Ever since our first visit to Legoland, Christopher has wanted to complete the Legoland Traffic School and earn his driver's license... however, they only accept applicants age 7 or older. This year Christopher is 7, and (as you can see from the photo set) he attended the Traffic School last week. He now has an official Legoland Driver's License for Germany, even though he ran at least one red light and wrongly signalled most of his turns (he'd signal right, then turn left, or vice versa). Whatever. The back side of the license is a (fake) StatOil credit card, and they just happen to be the main sponsor of the Traffic School. Good thing we don't have any StatOil stations in Germany.

Founding the Business

2007-04-14T08:15:30+00:00

As you can see, we've started setting up our business.

In the upper left you can see the two founders. They are stubborn as donkeys, and have already dressed warm (*haben sich warm angezogen*) in preparation for the tough times ahead. Between them is a crystal ball with a vision of the future.

To their right is a device for cutting costs. If twisted just right it can also be used to cut corners. On the shelf beneath them we are trying to bring light into the darkness.

(Hmm, somehow this seemed much funnier when we were cleaning out the shelf. But the two binders to the left are really our first business files.)

Cem's Back

2007-04-14T07:17:47+00:00

Cem Basman is blogging again (in German) at Sprechblase. He's not sure what he wants to do, but he's having fun and Der Weg ist das Ziel and all that. I hope he posts more memories of growing up in Instanbul Welcome back, and keep having fun.

Coffee and the German Banking System

2007-04-13T03:24:52+00:00

Back in 1995 when we were planning to build our house, we thought we'd be smart and check out the best mortgage rates in the local paper. One of the banks listed was the Berliner Bank, and when we went in they offered us coffee and said sorry, the rate listed in the paper was a printing error, but they could offer us a mortgage anyway. They were the only bank to offer us coffee, an entire pot with ceramic cups at that. Of course that's where we ended up getting our financing. The fact that Berliner Bank later nearly went bankrupt because of shady real estate deals has nothing to do with us.

MamaMaus has known for a long time that she eventually wanted to go into business for herself, and has been trying to develop a coffee-drinking relationship with her bank. A bank is of course happiest when you either have a large account balance or a large debt, preferably both at the same time. They love it when she gets her annual bonus. "Hello, we notice you have an unusually high balance at the moment... can we invite you in for coffee?" Re-financing the above-mentioned mortgage was another coffee-drinking moment which I got to share. (The mortgage is in her name, but my signature was required as Mitschuldner, or co-debtor. Mitschuldner has since become one of our favorite terms of endearment.)

I mention all this only because the proceeds from our stock transaction has hit our bank account (we've been lucky, the stock is only up 20 cents since then). Now we've got to quickly put the money someplace before the bank invites her in for coffee again. We want to save the coffee drinking for the actual financing of the business, plus a small renovation we want to do right away, so we're not ready to go into caffeine shock quite yet.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard delayed until October

2007-04-13T02:39:38+00:00

Apple ~~Computer~~: Leopard delayed. The funny thing is at work we were actually planning Mac OS X Server implementations based on Leopard being out by summer. At the meeting I was muttering "Vapor, vapor, vapor" under my breath. I wish I had muttered it out loud so I could tell everyone I told you so. (via vowe)

Dreams for Sale: $46.45

2007-04-10T05:43:45+00:00

Seeing as we have a need for cash in the next couple of months, MamaMaus exercised some of her stock options last night at $46.45.

Unlike Jim, she doesn't have to disclose her income or stock transactions. I mention this only as a public service to our readers, since we are notoriously bad at timing stock transactions. Sure, we sold on the day of a 7-year high, but MCD is probably going to take off like a rocket now.

Minicruise Photo Set

2007-04-09T08:52:31+00:00

I'm just now getting over the Easter flu and we're heading off for family events this afternoon, so I'll just point to the photo set from our Oslo trip and write about the trip later. I'll let you guess which photos Christopher took (hint: he's interested in fire extinguishers and wastebaskets, but not so much in bridges).

Nice Try, Mama

2007-04-08T06:07:04+00:00

MamaMaus brought home this picture and said it would be good for PapaScott. File it under McDonald's humor that McDonald's people find funny. If you've never sent a child to a German school, this is obviously a school lunch Pausenbrot in a different wrapping.

It seems to come from an ad campaign for McDonald's Austria.

No, we don't do this. We wrap Christopher's Pausenbrot in normal waxed paper like all other parents.

I Got the Bug

2007-04-07T18:21:17+00:00

After our trip this week I'm laying low with a touch of the flu. I'm even skipping biggest event of the year in Lüllau, the Easter fire. Mama and Christopher are there, though, and I'm sure they can drive out the evil spirits of winter without me.

Back In Town

2007-04-05T04:52:15+00:00

We returned last night from our "mini cruise" from Copenhagen to Oslo, with a stop at Legoland in Billund on the way home. We'll spend Easter at home before getting back to school and work next week (although MamaMaus, true to form, is working already today).

I'll also be doing some work with a Torx 8 screwdriver today. Fellow MacBook owners will know exactly what that means... swiching to a bigger hard disk!

Our Restaurant in Google Maps

2007-03-30T19:26:18+00:00

We can't tell you where it is yet, but we can show it to you, thanks to Google Maps.

Update: I guess we can paint a logo on the roof, then wait a couple years for Google to update their images... although a Target store has somewhat more roof space than we will. (Seriously, we will look into it... MamaMaus says the store is clearly visible to planes landing at Hamburg Airport from the south. And it would be a great way to get free publicity for a day.)

All McDonald's in Germany Smoke-Free

2007-03-30T10:27:20+00:00

Starting tomorrow all 1270 McDonald's in Germany will be non-smoking.

Zum 31. März werden die rund 1.270 deutschen Restaurants von McDonalds rauchfrei sein. Mit dieser freiwilligen Selbstverpflichtung leistet McDonalds einen aktiven Beitrag zum Gesundheitsschutz. Durch die Umstellung sollen insbesondere Familien und Kinder vor den schädlichen Folgen des Passivrauchens geschützt werden.

McDonald's is the first German restaurant company to go totally non-smoking, but I'm sure others will follow.

Animalistic

2007-03-30T06:47:08+00:00

In the States we have Anna Nicole and Brittney, in Germany we have bears! Last year it was Problem Bear Bruno, and currently it's Cute Knut in the Berlin Zoo. He even made it on the cover of the Vanity Fair. I guess it's OK as long as the bears don't shave off all their hair or die of overdoses.

Fried Fish

2007-03-29T06:01:30+00:00

Thanks to Shelley for pointing to this combination goldfish tank and fast food fryer. But I doubt that our field consultant would approve it.

Because oil floats on water, despite the massive heat (163 degrees Celsius) the goldfish simply stay away from the surface and all is well. They eat the crumbs of croquettes and other fried foods that fall to the bottom, and can live in there for 5-10 years as they happily clean away, ignorant to the fact that certain death awaits any potential escapees.

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Hamburg Sunny Day

2007-03-28T17:42:34+00:00

Despite the excitement of our upcoming business venture, we still have our usual everyday events. Right now Christopher has two weeks off school for Easter vacation, and I've taken the time off work. MamaMaus works this week, but we'll all three be taking off to Oslo and Denmark for a few days next week.

Today Christopher and I took advantage of the sunny weather to head to Hamburg. After hitting the Lego store, we headed to the harbor for the cheapest harbor tour in town... the HADAG commuter ferry, all you need is a HVV subway ticket.

We then went to the springtime Hamburger Dom, Hamburg's carnival midway. If you've been to Oktoberfest, imagine the Wies'n without the obnoxious beer tents (however difficult that may be). Today was even family day, so every stand had special prices.

This is Christopher atop the fun house.

This is how he landed.

Plus Twenty Years

2007-03-27T19:50:59+00:00

We were able to announce our big change today because MamaMaus broke the news to her staff today. One of her team members told her on the phone this evening, "I guess you'll only be around for a couple more days... plus twenty years".

That's true. The franchise contract for McDonald's runs for twenty years. By that time I'll be 65 and ready for something new.

Then again, many franchise contracts are extended into "second generation". In twenty years Christopher will be 27...

Bricks and Mortar

2007-03-27T10:00:10+00:00

Some big changes are coming to the PapaScott household.

After 23 years with McDonald's, 16 years in Germany, MamaMaus will be leaving McDonald's Deutschland Inc. She has been Regional Manager for Northern Germany since 2001.

This summer, she will fulfill her long-time dream and become a McDonald's licensee. She will be given the opportunity to purchase an existing restaurant here in northern Germany.

The best part is that we both will be able to run the business together. We will see and work with each other every day. After the past couple of years of frequent business trips, that will be a welcome change. That means I will be leaving my job at MediaVentures this summer.

In the next few weeks we will be arranging a few details like founding the business, signing the franchise contract, and arranging the financing of several hundred thousand Euros (our banker is very friendly to us at the moment). In May MamaMaus begins in-restaurant training (as if she has very much to learn). When all goes according to plan, two months later we will be in business.

So much for a McJob being "unstimulating" with "few prospects". Our prospects are looking better than ever!

2007-03-20T11:00:42+00:00

From The Financial Times:

The UK arm of the fast food chain is starting a campaign to get British dictionary publishers to revise their definitions of the word McJob, a term the Oxford English Dictionary describes as an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector...

We believe that (the definition) is out of date, out of touch with reality and most importantly it is insulting to those talented, committed, hard-working people who serve the public every day, wrote David Fairhurst, chief people officer in northern Europe for McDonalds, in a letter seen by the Financial Times seeking support for the petition. Its time the dictionary definition of McJob changed to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression and skills that last a lifetime.

McDonalds says it has an excellent record of promoting female workers and entry level staff to senior executive positions. In the UK, half the executive team started on the shop floor and 25 per cent are women.

(via Spiegel Online)

Internet Operator

2007-03-19T19:37:00+00:00

Michael Glos is Germany's Economics and Technology Minister. He doesn't really understand the internet, but then he doesn't need to:

Thankfully I have people who operate the internet for me
(Ich habe Gott sei Dank Leute, die für mich das Internet bedienen)

I guess that means his secretary prints out his email for him.

He actually spends most of his time protecting Germany's car industry. He doubt that he understands cars either, but he has people who operate them for him. (via Ringfahndung)

Samsung Q35 Red

2007-03-19T17:44:43+00:00

We're looking at a new notebook for MamaMaus. Since I don't think I can talk her into an Apple ("I don't want to learn anything new!"), I asked her what features she needed. "It needs to be small," she said, "and powerful." That wasn't a big help.

Then she added, "I saw a red notebook from Samsung that looked pretty good." Well, if color is a main criterion, at least that limits the field somewhat. And the Samsung Q35 Red actually seems pretty good.

Dante's CeBIT

2007-03-19T03:04:03+00:00

I'm proud to say that for the 9th consecutive year, I will not be attending the CeBIT in Hannover, and that if you want to meet me, I won't be there.

Back before I worked I worked in IT, I used to go every year. These days I have no interest. I think that if Dante were alive today, he'd write about the circles of CeBIT insteal of the circles of Hell.

CrossTouran

2007-03-18T19:52:05+00:00

We're looking at new cars. Something roomy and practical but not too plain. The new CrossTouran from Volkswagen has caught our eye. It's kind of a cross between a SUV and a van, but the TDI still gets 6.2 l per 100 km (that's 38 mpg). The deep black with anthracite interior looks sharp. But you can't get it in the States.

Travel Insurance

2007-03-17T19:06:49+00:00

We're looking at the cancellation insurance on the trips we've planned this year. The policy for our Icelandair flight is pretty basic. It covers illness or property crimes, and that's it. However, the policy for our Easter vacation ferry trip to Oslo has several clauses. Not only is our vacation protected against illness and crime, but also against losing a job, finding a job, starting a new job, having to repeat a failed test, or being drafted into the military.

That's right, if you're unemployed you can insure yourself against finding a job. Only in Germany.

The Smell of Sweetness

2007-03-15T17:50:27+00:00

Spring may not begin for another week, but here in the country spring has already sprung. The first "honey wagon" has appeared in the fields, and we've been basking in the sweet smell of Gülle all day.

The German Wikipedia describes Gülle as "organic fertilizer comprised mostly of urine and excrement", which is somewhat more revealing than the straight dictionary translation of "liquid manure".

Redubbing Cartoons

2007-03-15T04:03:00+00:00

Here's a crazy and fun way to waste cycles on your MacBook... redub cartoons with your kids! We have a bunch of Lilo and Stitch episodes on our HD recorder, and after second or third time Christopher starts saying the lines along with the TV. "If this keeps up we can just turn off the sound and let you say everything," I told him. And then I remembered that iMovie has a redub function.

We're not using any equipment, just a plain headset plugged into the MacBook, but we're doing this just for fun. I've never done any kind of audio or video work before, so it's kind of tedious to blend the tracks in and out. And Christopher is very fussy with himself. It took us an hour to record two 10 second bits for one character. I'm sure there are some tricks to yet to learn about editing quickly or compressing the bits to fit an exact time frame (maybe in GarageBand?).

But we're both having a blast, and maybe in a week or two we'll have the scene ready and we can watch (or at least listen to) ourselves for a couple of minutes on the big screen.

Irritable and Distracted

2007-03-13T08:16:31+00:00

Sorry for the lack of subtance here lately. (Actually, that's just a phrase. I'm not really sorry at all.) There are a couple of explanations.

I'm irritable. I'm losing weight (again). I can lose weight like other people can stop smoking. It's so easy, I've done it dozens of times. However, this time I've just finished a huge bout of negative motivation, and there's no way I ever want to go through that again. Hopefully that's what it will take to make it stick. But in the meantime I'm grumpy.
I'm distracted. There's something very huge and very good that's going to happen this year that's going to mean big changes for all of us in the PapaScott household. But I can't talk about it yet, except to say that it in no way involves childbirth.

Update 27 Mar 2007: I made this post private after the first four comments. Not that any of them were close to guessing the secret, but anyone who knew us personally would have immediately known what the "big change" was. The secret will be released today, so I've made the post public again.

Twitter

2007-03-13T07:47:46+00:00

On the new latest thing...

In an age where style easily trumps content, Twitter has neither.

Seth Ladd (via Burningbird)

Kids Marketing

2007-03-08T13:28:27+00:00

This may look like leftover spaghetti. But it's really volcano noodles with lava sauce with stone pieces.

Marketing is everything.

This Time Nationwide

2007-03-06T16:10:10+00:00

MamaMaus has once again graced the pages of the Bild Zeitung, this time not just the Hamburg edition, but nationwide on Page 2: Jobwunder Mittelstand (online edition, click through the Mehr zum Thema box, or look here for just her), although I'm not sure her employer, an American DJIA-listed corporation, really qualifies as German Mittelstand. The caption is pretty much the same as last time.

The paper should still be on the newsstands, buy it before it sells out. Or check out the scan
:-)

Fifty States in Ten Minutes

2007-03-05T07:29:35+00:00

Fifty States in Ten Minutes is a cute quiz to see how many states you can name in 10 minutes. I got the first 47 in three minutes, but could only add Idaho a couple of minutes later. Not bad for an expat, but I'm sure there are deep psychological reasons for forgetting New Jersey and Utah. (Via 2020 Hindsight)

Mickey Mouse Outfit

2007-03-04T08:30:19+00:00

Today John Gruber linked to a profile of John Lasseter, the director of Toy Story and Cars and now chief creative officer at Disney Feature Animation. The undertone of the friction of the Pixar and Disney corporate cultres is interesting, as well as the mention that Chris Sanders, the writer and director of Lilo and Stitch, will be leaving Disney.

That's interesting for us because Lilo and Stitch is Christopher's current obessesion. The TV series is currently on Super RTL, and it's the only show he watches (albeit twice a day) (although as a treat we'll sometimes let him watch Kim Possible). He knows the names and numbers of the 625 experiments, he tries to sing along with the theme song (in Hawaiian), and even has a Stitch plush toy (which we ordered from a E-Bay seller in Hong Kong, since they don't seem to be available at all in Europe).

More interesting is that Christopher an incessant drawer, going through reams of paper (emptying the paper trays of the computer printers), and seems interested in how animation is made. He asked "who invented Lilo and Stitch", so we looked up on Wikipedia and IMDB and found the writers were Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. That's how I immediately recognized the name.

We have no idea whether Christopher has any drawing talent, but he has fun with it. This week we got him an easel at Ikea with a chalkboard and whiteboard, so our paper costs should be reduced drastically, and maybe the paper will stay in our printers. The last episode of the series is being broadcast this week, so maybe he'll have to find a new obsession.

Organic Foods

2007-02-28T11:37:05+00:00

These days *Bio* or organic food is very much in trend in Germany, but this is one item I was happy to see not to be "all natural". Chocolate lamb pellets from the island of Sylt.

Who Do I Sue?

2007-02-28T09:18:03+00:00

I've just been informed that the German technology magazine c/t has without our permission published my and Christopher's picture in their latest issue (05/2007, p. 70), in the screen shot of a feed reader. So who do I sue? The original post comes from Jörg Kantel's Der Schockwellenreiter, but he works for a public institution, so there are no deep pockets there. But Volker Weber writes for c/t, maybe I can score one of his Blackberries....

2007-02-26T20:54:18+00:00

Lothar-Günther Buchheim, the author of "Das Boot", died last week aged 89. The film, but especially the book (in English translation), were very important to me when it became clear that I would be spending a permanent relationship with a Ger(wo)man, and with a nation full of Nazis (so I thought). The novel shows the pointlessness of war, the humanity of the sailors, and the extreme claustrophia aboard the U-Boat. Thanks to Garret for posting the obituary.

Attempted Denial-of-Service Attack

2007-02-24T19:29:16+00:00

Christopher and I are playing bachelor this weekend. Today we decided to go toy and tech shopping in Hamburg. We drove to the Park-and-Ride in Harburg and took the S-Bahn downtown.

When we returned to drive home, the lock in the drivers' side door was stuck and would only partially turn. The passenger side lock was completely jammed and I could not insert the key. My first thought was that my key was damaged. I was able to open the back hatch, however, so Christopher could climb in and open the doors from the inside. The ignition also switched on with no problems.

When we got home I tried my spare key with the same results. I can only conclude that a "friendly" passerby in the parking ramp decided it would be fun to jam the door locks on a certain VW Lupo.

I think I still prefer a proper lock with a physical key to the electronic key for MamaMaus' Audi. One time last month she came back in the house after she started her car, and left her key in the kitchen. She was able to drive off, but was then unable to start the car again when she wanted to come home. Good thing she was only at the grocery store, and not some far-away city.

My Not So Aching Back

2007-02-21T19:47:35+00:00

Thanks to Karl and everyone else who wished me well for my birthday, despite my post telling everyone not to.

As for my back, I'm making good progress. As my father phrased it, it no longer hurts, it's just stiff and sore. I can sleep through the night without pain, and today I drove to Hamburg and back without any pain for the first time since November. I must be doing something right.

pfSense: M0n0wall and more

2007-02-20T21:19:39+00:00

I've been a big fan of the FreeBSD-based firewall M0n0wall for some time. Yesterday I finally got around to trying out pfSense, which is based on M0n0wall but which can take advantage of bigger hardware. It's only been a day, but I think I'm hooked.

M0n0wall was developed for embedded devices, and can work with a minimum of CPU, memory and disk (or CF). That means that it doesn't have some features you might find handy in a firewall, like a login shell or a packet sniffer (they can be hacked in, but still). M0n0wall does run on x86 hardware, but it's going to remain focused on small hardware. pfSense started as a friendly fork a couple of years ago to add features and a more recent FreeBSD for those with hardware to support them. We're not talking massive hardware here... 128MB RAM and CF (as opposed to 64MB RAM and 8MB CF for M0n0wall).

pfSense released 1.0 last fall, but my M0n0walls at home and at work have been working well, so I never looked into it. We're now considering infrasructure changes at work, and it'd be nice to have OpenVPN on the firewall. pfSense has it. I run the CD-ROM version of M0n0wall on an old PC at home, with settings saved on a floppy. I inserted the pfSense CD and rebooted. It took over the M0n0wall settings and just worked. Over the console I was able to copy the running system to hard disk, so I can now add packages and install updates.

Just clicking through the interface I found a half dozen reasons to consider switching even running systems:

SSH login with standard command-line tools (mmmm, tcpdump)
OpenVPN on board
Aliases for groups of hosts, networks and ports
Add-in packages for nmap and ntop
NAT reflector (NAT addresses available from LAN, makes routing much simpler)
Load Balancer

The aliases should be real nice since I was raised on the object model in CheckPoint. One drawback of M0n0wall is that it's hard to keep the rules organized, the more intelligent aliases in pfSense should make the rules a bit more managable.

Bandwagon

2007-02-19T09:08:42+00:00

Bandwagon is a new server that backs up iTunes music libraries from your Mac to Amazon S3 for a flat rate. Sounds like a sensible use of umlimited storage to me.

Disclosure: By posting this, they're giving me a free one-year account. (via Aaron Swartz)

Update: If you do the the link, make sure you make your own copy of the logo... as Shelley points out in the commments, images from Flickr can only link back to Flickr.

Fasching, the morning of

2007-02-19T07:06:00+00:00

This morning our son disappeared, and in his place a Sams appeared! A Sams is a being with red hair, a short trunk-like nose, a wet suit and swim flippers, and magical blue "wish dots" on its face that can grant wishes. It speaks or sings mostly in rhyme and causes a great deal of chaos. It usually arrives on Saturday (Samstag).

It is the star of a series of children's books by Paul Maar and two films.

Fasching, the night before

2007-02-18T20:26:04+00:00

Tomorrow Christopher's school is celebrating Fasching... here are the main components of his costume. Aficionados of 20th century German children's literature can probably guess what will come of it.

Here in northern Germany Fasching or Karneval is strictly for children, unlike in lesser developed parts of the country (although some towns near us celebrate Faslam, which seems to be Karneval reduced to the bare essentials: getting drunk in a clown costume).

Hanging Out With The Goats

2007-02-18T19:04:51+00:00

This afternoon was sunny, so we took a trip to the animal park in Nindorf so Christopher could hang out with the goats.

Yes, we did pretty much the same thing a year ago.

Soundtrack of Life

2007-02-16T19:43:16+00:00

I don't follow every meme that comes along, but the Soundtrack of Life that's going through our company seemed interesting, especially since I never listen to music at random. Here are the rules:

Open your player player (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod etc.).
Set it to "Shuffle/Random".
Press "Play".
For each answer write the song title that's being played.
For each new question hit the "Next" button.
Don't lie or pretend to be cool - just type the titles.

The result are some titles that I don't even recognize...

Opening Credits:
Not Like This - Al Jarreau
Awakening:
Lucky Star - Madonna
Not a bad start
First Day of School:
Insincere Because I - The Dandy Warhols
Falling in Love:
Sentimental - Kenny G
The Kenny G CDs are not mine!
The First Time:
Nothing Really Matters - Madonna
In the long run, no
Battle Song:
Leave My Monkey Alone - Warren Zevon
Or he'll bite you!
Breaking Up:
Kuba - Fettes Brot
Prom:
I Want You To Hurt Like I Do - Randy Newman
Did I ever tell the story of how I missed MamaMaus' senior prom because of a car accident?
Life:
Bonny & Clyde - Die Toten Hosen
A life of crime?
Nervous Breakdown:
Please - The Nylons
Driving:
This Fire - Franz Ferdninand
Flashback:
Nebraska - Bruce Spingsteen
Looking back on a life of crime?
Wedding:
Vermissen Baby - Die Ärzte
Over before it begins
First Born Child:
Love Is The New Feel Awful - The Dandy Warhols
Final Struggle:
Streets of Fire - Bruce Springsteen
Death Scene:
Er Gehörte Mal Mir - Annett Louisan
Funeral:
Nur Geträumt - Nena
Excellent!
Credits:
Take Me To The River - Talking Heads
More excellent!

Wrestlers and Comedians

2007-02-15T18:02:05+00:00

I guess if my home state of Minnesota can elect a professional wrestler as governor there's no reason they can't elect a comedian to the US Senate: BBC: Comedian Franken makes Senate bid

Anti-Family Policy

2007-02-15T06:30:28+00:00

Some news items from Germany are just too gruesome to be translated into other languages. Take family policy. Both DW-World and Spiegel International will report in English on Germany's poor showing in the UNICEF study of child welfare, but the views of certain German politicians remain untranslated. But all is not lost, we will venture into the crypt, and PapaScott will explain and translate the gory details...

Berlin (Reuters) - In spite of the support of the CDU leadership, Family Minister is facing increasing criticism in the Union for her plan to increase day care for small children.

Union parliamentary leader Volker Kauder warned against concentrating on the family model with a working mother. "I think that's wrong" he told the "Neuen Osnabrücker Zeitung". The federal budget should also not be tapped for the financing of hundreds of thousands of day care places, as suggested by von der Leyen. That is a matter for the states. Thüringen CDU General Secretary Mike Mohring accused the minister of scaring away traditional Union voters. The CSU state leader in the Bundestag, Peter Ramsauer, stated that the minister does not represent the image of the family of many Union party members.

Yes, you read that right, and these quotes are from 2007, not 1937. These politicians deliberately make it difficult for women to choose both a career and a family. And then they wonder why Germany does so badly in international comparisons of child welfare and education.

Given that in half the households in Germany the woman is smarter and would have better earning potential than the man (MamaMaus would say it's more like 80%), then Germany is missing out on half (or 80%) of its current potential, not to mention the future that is being wasted by such Neanderthal views. This is not family policy, this is anti-family policy.

Growing Up At McDonald's

2007-02-14T06:47:32+00:00

Evanston Review: Food background? yes and no. A food writer for a suburban newspaper talks about growing up in a McDonald's household. Funny thing is we know her and her family. They moved to Arizona about the same time we did. They stayed, we didn't.

My Obama

2007-02-12T08:11:42+00:00

Nico notes the community website my.barackobama.com und wonders whether such website would be imaginable for a German candidate. He doesn't think so, and I don't either, but not for the same reasons. Nico thinks that German parties are afraid of losing control of the political process. I think that parties in general are incapable of such inter-networking. In the game of politics, in this case the issue is not the players but the rules.

In the US form of representitive democracy the basic unit of politics is the individual. Political parties aren't mentioned in the constitution and evolved later (and we Americans don't believe in organized parties, at least for the Democrats). At the national level, the parties choose their candidates open and democratically, a process which is long, messy and expensive. In the German parliamentary system the party is the basic unit of politics. The parties go through great lengths to avoid choosing their leadership and candidates openly and democratically, as in the current CSU contest between Huber and Seehofer where the CSU wants to avoid an open vote at all costs.

The question is not whether one could imagine the possible chancellor candidates Merkel and Beck starting such websites, but whether one could have imagined (for example) the potential candidates Merkel and Stoiber starting such communities to win the CDU/CSU candidacy. Of course not. Since the electorate played no role in the decision, such a community would have been a total waste of time and resources.

By the way, I hope Nico is not serious about raising money for Obama. Federal rules prohibit candidates from accepting contributions from individuals who are not US citizens or residents. But if he wants to contribute money to a candidate, he can send it to me and I'll be happy to pass it along.

Volksmusik as a Product Defect

2007-02-10T07:30:13+00:00

If you are forced to listen to Volksmusik on your Caribbean cruise, you might be entitled to a refund, a court in Frankfurt has decided. In this case, 60 German tourists who had been promised Caribbean music were on a ship with 500 members of a Swiss folklore club. They were entitled to a 40% refund.

I wonder if this could a precedent to request a partial refund of the broadcast fees we pay to the GEZ. I'm sure we could prove that the Volksmusik programs on ARD and ZDF constitute "cruel and unusual punishment".

Could Be Winnipeg

2007-02-10T06:55:28+00:00

You know the weather's cold when the best thing you can say about is "it could be worse, we could be in Winnipeg". Or when you can point out the little used fact that "-40 is where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales meet".

Considering that cities have a heat island that raises the temperature by about 5°C, it's even colder than it sounds. The coldest I've experienced was -31°F on a sunny day in Minneapolis. (Minnesotans often brag about the wind chill, but I'm talking about actual temperature.)

By the way, it's not that cold here. It's a balmy -2°C with 5 cm of snow that will be gone by tomorrow evening.

Hello World, We're Here Again

2007-02-09T00:05:11+00:00

Cmon everybody do you want something real?
Cant seem to get ahead but its no big deal
Floating like a feather in a wide open space
Landing in a perfect happy place </p>

Today is my birthday. I turn 45 today. But instead of you wishing me happy birthday, let's turn the tables. I want to wish all of you all the best today. And for the coming year. And for the rest of your life. Enjoy!

I hear what I wanna here living on Cloud Nine
Jumping on a bed of flowers chasing the time
"Oh its a hard road" says everyone I meet
We cant trust the ground beneath our feet

(Lyrics: La La Land by the Go-Go's)

Wrong Passport

2007-02-07T11:31:39+00:00

From a Deutsche Welle analysis of the Kurnaz case:

Legally, Berlin was under no obligation to protect a German-born Turkish citizen imprisoned in Guantanamo. But moral and political responsibility for a permanent resident unjustly detained is another matter, experts say.

Um, right, like the German government is going to lift a finger for me if I ever get in trouble. Let's just say that if I've got one phone call before I get shipped to the Gulag, I'm calling the embassy with the blue passports, not the one with the red passports.

Conscientious Objector

2007-02-07T07:58:27+00:00

In case you wonder why developers are so difficult to work with, Nico heard this in our office in Cologne:

I reject Ruby on Rails for reasons of conscience.

Try explaining that to a client when your project is late and over budget. "We could have used a better framework, but our development team thought it was immoral."

Attitude

2007-02-06T21:56:57+00:00

After pissing and moaning yesterday about my back, I slept through the night last night and feel pretty good today. Letting off steam helps (as does a pillow for the legs and new exercises).

Oh, and welcome to the new look.

Traction Times Ten

2007-02-05T20:47:32+00:00

It's now been four weeks since my herniated disc was diagnosed, and I've gone through the first set of treatments. I'm not taking any medication, and we're trying to avoid surgery. I've been undergoing traction for my left hip and lower back, and taking acupuncture and TENS treatment for pain.

After four weeks, I can see it's going to be a long haul. The pain relief has stagnated, and the past week I haven't been able to sleep through the night. The pain itself it dynamic, the intensity ebbs and wanes, and the epicenter seems to be moving upwards. I hope that's a sign of healing, that the pain is moving to it's true source in the spinal column. This weekend for the first time I felt discomfort in my back for the first time. Until now the pain has only been in my hip and legs. I'm fine when I standing, it's when sitting and laying down that the pain occurs. Waking up in the morning (or the middle of the night, as the case may be) it takes 30 minutes to an hour for the pain to subside.

We'll continue the chiropractic traction treatments, they are what seem do the most good. I'm not sure about the acupuncture. I'm not sure TENS actually relieves pain or just distracts from it, but I guess on the whole it helps. I can see this is going to be a process of months and not weeks, and I'm glad our orthopedist is just a 5 minute drive. I'm also very glad I work at home... an hour drive twice a day would be pure torture.

No Exception

2007-02-05T13:59:06+00:00

In case anyone is wondering, I didn't watch the Super Bowl this year. I have never watched the Super Bowl in all the years I have been in Germany. This year was no exception.

Bring Slippers to School

2007-02-04T03:22:36+00:00

Andrea pointed out an article in Die Zeit on a journalist's experience with his daughter's first grade class in Berlin, and how much has changed since was in first grade. I could identify a lot with Christopher's experience. He also is learning letters phonetically, incorrect spelling is ignored for now, and he also has slippers at school. Unlike in the article, his class has a number (1c) not a name and he has to practice writing block letters like in the old days. His school has a 'family class' with grades 1-4 in one room, but he's in a traditional class.

I find learning reading phonetically to be fascinating. For example, their newest letter is 'H', which is called "huh" (whisphered) and not "aitch" (or "haw" as it would be in German). They also learn gestures for each letter to associate with the sound. For 'H' it is putting both hands in front of your mouth (as if you were blowing on your hands on a cold day). One day he and the neighbor girl were spelling words with gestures, and it looked like they were hula dancing. The phonetic system probably works only because the phonetics in German are consistent. I can't imagine learning English this way.

Christopher is not into writing out words like the girl in the article. He's more into building and drawing. His career goal at the moment is to design new figures for the Lego Group (pdf).

Report Card Vacation

2007-01-31T03:41:35+00:00

This week the schoolkids in Niedersachsen get 2 days off school for *Zeugnisferien*, or report card vacation. As far as I know, the first graders at Christopher's school don't even get report cards, but they get the days off anyway.

Even better, today his school lets out at 10 am, after exactly 90 minutes in class. So working parents lose 3 days instead of 2.

That din you'll be hearing in the background is the sound of somewhat more chaos than usual.

Airline Crap Shoot 2007

2007-01-30T07:36:26+00:00

We've flown between Hamburg and Minneapolis (either starting from there or starting from here) pretty much every year for the past 25 years. We'll be doing it again this summer. And we know the choices better than any travel agent or web site. There are no direct flights, there haven't been since the '80s. If you want one stop, you either have to fly direct Hamburg to North America (currently Continental or Emirates) or Minneapolis to Europe (Northwest or Northwest). My wife collects hundreds of thousands of Lufthansa miles, but usually they don't help us much (this year the closest they could get us was Newark).

You also would like to avoid an extra stop in the US if you can, since US Immigration is a risk factor. If you can't avoid it, you should allow at least 3 hours between flights. We've missed connections and had luggage delayed by cutting the connections too close. That would have limited our options to Northwest. They were OK last year, but the flights with the old DC-10s were somewhat cramped.

This year, though, we remembered that Icelandair also flies to Minneapolis. The regular travel sites wouldn't show us Icelandair flights, since there's no good way to get from Hamburg to Reykjavik. But flying from Frankfurt was 4 hours shorter than any other flight we checked (just 1 hour layover at Keflavik), the cost was several hundred Euros less than the other flights, and we have all those Lufthansa miles to get to Frankfurt.

We flew Icelandair once to Florida, and we were quite impressed. We promised ourselves to fly with them again if it were practical. Keflavik is a small airport, so transfers are easy. And they fly 757s, with rows only 6 across. We're guaranteed to sit together, with a window seat for Christopher, and noone will get stuck in the middle aisle.

So Iceland here we come (for one hour). We've got 2 stops and have to fly through the Monster Maze in Frankfurt, but the shorter total time, the smaller planes, and the quick transfer in Reykjavik should make for a good flight.

No thanks, I'll just drive my radio

2007-01-29T19:47:46+00:00

He: If anyone asks*, for my birthday I'd like money to get myself a new car radio.

She: Your car radio works just fine. Why don't you buy a new car?

He: ?!?

(*Actually the question "What do you want for Christmas/your birthday" could be the subject of an entire expat post, although I'm not sure if all Germans are obsessive about this question, or just my in-laws. They also always ask my wife what I want instead of me personally. Maybe they got tired of me answering "World peace".)

One Good Thing About Germany

2007-01-26T20:18:05+00:00

Man: Hey, are you guys from Germany?
Tourists: Ja?
Man: I'll tell you one good thing about Germany -- the beer, the food, and the women.
Tourist: Ja.

via Overheard in New York, Jan 25, 2007

What Old People Listen To

2007-01-25T19:46:15+00:00

Soeren asked me what I would consider the best albums of all time or most important to me. I decided both "best" and "important" were uninteresting (and best has already been done). I decided to list "favorite" instead, albums I like and listen to, even though they may not be the best, and maybe next week my list would be different. I did limit myself to one pick per artist. In order:

Dirty Mind, Prince
Rocket to Russia, Ramones
Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
London Calling, The Clash
Making Movies, Dire Straits
Achtung Baby, U2
Talk Show, Go-Go's
Planet Punk, Die Ärzte
So, Peter Gabriel

He listed nine, so I did too (though the 9th was the hardest to pick). For the moment I won't explain my choices, maybe later. Feel free to tell me in the comments why my picks suck.

Linux Can Be Dangerous

2007-01-25T12:54:50+00:00

Today's Dilbert shows how Linux can be dangerous for your job... particularly (but not only) if you are a super-intelligent space alien.

Wine School 2

2007-01-23T18:19:54+00:00

I resumed the Stern wine school, which I started last week, on the night of the big storm last Thursday. The next lesson was another Bordeaux, this one a price class higher. The 2004 Dutruch costs 20, so I wasn't greatly disappointed that my first impression was that it was way too bitter for my taste. I certainly did not detect the aroma of tea leaves, tobacco or pencil shavings mentioned by Messrs. Lange and Lange.

Unforunately for my wallet the Dutruch tasted much better the next day, after I had left the remaining half-bottle corked at room temperature overnight. I guess I should take the temperature recommendations and the suggestion that it be decanted more seriously. The price is too rich for for me for everyday consumption, but I could see keep a few bottles in the basement (or in the closet, as the Langes suggest) for special occasions. It's supposed to only get better for the next 3 to 5 years.

The next wine is also from Bordeaux, this time a fresh white wine. It doesn't seem right for January, but we'll see.

Coming Home

2007-01-23T12:27:26+00:00

The Bundestagkantine radio show this morning (on the investigation of whether the Schröder government hindered the release of Murat Kurnaz from Guantanamo) wasn't particularly funny, although the comment that "with that beard we thought he was Wolfgang Thierse" was mildly amusing.

However, it was very funny that the next song on Radio Hamburg was "Coming Home" by Sasha.

City of Books and Pillows

2007-01-21T14:37:42+00:00

Christopher and his city of books and pillows. If you've seen "Lilo and Stich", you'll know what he has planned (key word: destruction).

Billary Returns

2007-01-21T11:07:20+00:00

That Hillary Clinton is running for President is about as surprising as the Pope being Catholic or the bear shitting in the woods, but the German press isn't very well informed on US politics, so she's been the big news here for past day. Her picture even made the the front page of the conservative Welt am Sonntag (which we only read for the real estate ads). The online edition is even running a story about Hillary's alter-ego, so I guess they're paying some attention.

Of course to truly make sense of American politics we have to turn to an analyst like Scott Adams, who today explains why we punish politicians for acting rational and why he already feels good about a Clinton/Obama ticket. Hey, it makes me feel good too!

King Stoiber Abdicates

2007-01-18T21:46:59+00:00

It is somehow appropriate that Edmund Stoiber announced his resignation as Bavarian Premier and CSU party head on the day of the worst weather in Germany in years. Were it not for bad weather that brought on the Elbe floods in 2002, we could be very well be at the beginning of the second term of a Stoiber chancellorship. He couldn't formulate a response back then. Thinking on his feet was never one of his strengths. It's probably just as well that he lost to Schröder.

Those of us who view politics as entertainment will miss him greatly.

Stormy Weather

2007-01-17T19:39:04+00:00

MamaMaus has a business meeting in Westerland on the island of Sylt tomorrow afternoon, to be followed in the evening by a reception in the Sansibar beach-side restaurant.

The weather service is forecasting a severe storm for all of Germany tomorrow evening, especially severe on the North Sea coast, with winds in excess of 150 km/h.

I hope she's not planning a moonlight walk on the beach.

Wine School

2007-01-16T20:57:14+00:00

The magazine Stern is publishing a 24-week long wine course, offering a package of 24 wines by post from Rindchen with an article in the print magazine and an online forum. According to The Drink Tank (hosted by my employer at blogg.de) over 6000 packages have been shipped, including one to yours truly. I'm a little late to the game. I just opened wine number one and this is already week 3. I have a feeling this is not the kind of class where you want to catch up on your studies all at once (especially since MamaMaus is a beer drinker, therefore I have to study alone). As for the week one Bordeaux, the 2005 Camarsac is nice for under 10 Euros, but I don't smell the berries, and certainly not the cougar cage.

Nice marketing gag... we usually don't read Stern but now we (or least I) will be reading every week until mid-June for sure.

Court Appointment

2007-01-16T20:32:39+00:00

The Shopblogger writes about the trials and tribulations of running a supermarket in Germany and is one of the more popular German blogs. Today he explains about a hearing in employment court where basically an ex-employee was awarded back pay and vacation for hours she never worked. German employment law can be absurd (firing an employee is technically illegal, you can always be taken to court), and is the main reason MamaMaus no longer has a blog of her own (yes, she used to) and no longer wants to be mentioned here by name.

Wii Don't

2007-01-16T13:02:26+00:00

Unlike my boss and just about everyone else at NU2M, I don't own a Nintendo Wii. I have not ordered a Wii. I have absolutely no interest in getting a Wii.

I may be in danger of losing my job.

Support Our Son's Habit

2007-01-12T20:50:31+00:00

Buy Christopher's Thomas wooden trainset depot, so he can buy more Lego Bionicles. Auction ends on Sunday.

This is our first time selling on EBay... I know, we're just so 20th century.

Health Care Here and There

2007-01-12T19:11:46+00:00

The Economist blog Free Exchange on perceptions of health care:

Talking to Europeans (particularly non-Brits) about things like health care and welfare programmes is a treat. Most of the Europeans I meet seem to believe that huge numbers of Americans get no health care at all, while the rich few wallow in luxury. In fact, the biggest problems uninsured Americans face are not doctors refusing to treat them, but the fact that they use the incredibly inconvenient emergency room for most of their care, and that a really bad illness could force them into bankruptcy....

Americans on the other hand, the overwhelming majority of whom are insured, seem to believe that millions of Europeans die each year from lack of treatment. The reality is much less grim; a fair number of Europeans go without hip replacements and other quality of life treatments, and some do die on waiting lists, but many of those people would have died anyway, because they have nasty diseases with life expectancies measured in months. America caters, expensively, to their desire to live a few extra weeks or months; Europe does not.

The reality lies somewhere in between the extremes, as for most things. Germany seems to least avoid the worth of both worlds. Coverage is pretty universal, and waiting lists are rare. But health care reform has been discussed for decades. Today the coalition agreed for a third time on a compromise reform package, without ever having presented the first two to the Bundestag. It saves times and paper, I guess, when you shoot down your own proposals before they are formally proposed. My current experience with the health care system is a reminder of the different levels of care for public and privately insured (the public patients get to sign all sorts of waivers and pay cash for treatments that aren't covered, the private patients are waved on through).

I guess like Alwin always said, with health care you have 3 options. Cheap, fast, or good. Pick any two.

Needles and Pins

2007-01-08T20:53:05+00:00

When I first talked about my back pain last month, I had just seen our family doctor and was going to wait a week to see whether the prescription would make things better. The pain improved somewhat, so I didn't go to the orthopedist right away. But it didn't go away either. The pain in my left leg was less intense, but was more persistent. I skipped the pain pills some days, and they didn't seem to make much difference. Over Christmas it was clear to me that more help was needed, and I went to the orthopedist last Thursday, the same doctor who got MamaMaus up and running so quickly after her accident in July.

He bent my legs a couple of times, took some x-rays, and was fairly certain I had a herniated disc. He put me on his standard 5-point program:

a lumbotrain bandage to support my lower back
buffered heels to be installed in my shoes
TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) pain treatment
lumbar and cervical traction
an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), with a possible ct-guided periradicular injection (PRT)

The MRI and possible PRT were scheduled for today. I wasn't too keen on having a needle inserted in to my spine, and I approached the appointment with no small amount of anxiety and lost sleep. I haven't been in the hospital since having my tonsils removed at age 8. My most serious medical problem since then was a broken thumb.

I went to a radiology clinic in Hamburg for the MRI. I spent 10 minutes in a tight tube with flashing lights and loud pounding (rather like a techno show), and within minutes the radiologist showed me a 3 mm extrusion from my L5-S1 vertebrae (very much like the picture here (Fig. 2)). We proceeded immediately to the PRT (my orthopedist is conveniently at the radiologist on Monday afternoons). My fear of the injection was totally unfounded. An initial scan to mark the point, an initial injection, an additional scan to confirm the position, and the injection was finished. I felt almost nothing, and the doctor said his aim was perfect. Within 20 minutes 90% of my pain was gone.

My traction and TENS treatments begin tomorrow, and I'll have my shoes by the end of the week. It's vital that I lose weight, and I'll have to watch out for my back for the rest of my life. But for this evening I'm looking forward to the best night's sleep I've had in weeks. If anyone is looking for an orthopedist (sports specialist and chiropractor) located south of Hamburg, we both can highly recommend Dr. Al-Hassani in Jesteburg.

Swedish religion

2007-01-08T08:04:34+00:00

Yet another tidbit of geographic wisdom from Overheard in New York:

Girl #2: Sweden? What is that, anyway -- a religion?

Click through to learn where Canada is located.

The Three from Ikea

2007-01-07T18:24:42+00:00

Meet Tinti, Netzi and Nepomuk, an octopus, spider, and dragon that Christopher freed from Ikea yesterday. His shopping was more successful than mine. The shelves I brought home were the wrong color (birch instead of beech).

The box and the styrofoam peanuts were a late Christmas package from Arizona, and were more fun than any toy.

A one-liner worth 1000 words

2007-01-03T19:27:12+00:00

In the "I wonder what the whole story is behind this" department

Woman eating lunch: ...Then they threw my father out of the Communist Party again. This time it was for refusing to play his accordion at parties.

Is this how Joey deVilla is going to end up? (via Overheard in New York)

That's Not Me!

2007-01-02T19:32:37+00:00

Nicole is looking friends on last.fm. Fine, I can add her to my list of contacts... but the playlists on my profile don't really reflect what I like to listen to. Here are "my" "Favorite Artists" from last week:

Those are all childrens' stories and music. Christopher had school vacation, and he got a lot of new CDs for Christmas and his birthday. I ripped them all into my Squeezebox, and we listened to them all. And, the scrobbler plugin for the Squeezebox sent all the titles to last.fm. Good thing MamaMaus has never learned to use the Squeezebox, otherwise my taste would be even more skewed.

I guess lists like my last.fm profile or my recommendations from Amazon are too stupid to realize when I'm listening (or buying) for someone else.

I now declare this bazaar opened

2006-12-31T15:43:51+00:00

MamaMaus just complained that there were no New Years' greetings on PapaScott. Consider yourselves so greeted.

The full text of our New Years' address can be found here or as video here.

Decategorization

2006-12-29T20:39:04+00:00

A while ago I figured out that the websites I follow via RSS feeds fall into 3 categories:

Sites I want to read as quickly as possible when there is something new
Sites where I don't want to miss anything, but without any time pressure
Sites where I want to see what's current, but don't mind missing old news

In other words, for some sites I want to keep archives, but for others not. I couldn't figure out how to configure my RSS readers to do that, be it Net News Wire or Bloglines... until a couple days ago I figured it out for Google Reader. The key is that Google Reader allows you to assign feeds to multiple folders (or, to use their terminology, assign several default tags to single feeds). It is also quite easy to change folders for a couple of hundred feeds.

Instead of 50 different folders based on theme and geography, I now have 4 main folders based on priority: readfirst, readsecond, readthird, and no-archive. readfirst are the top priority feeds I read right away... sites like Daring Fireball, lumma.de, vowe dot net, and Overheard in New York. readsecond and readthird tend to be personal weblogs, tech and german weblogs in readsecond, us political weblogs in readthird. no-archive are news sites and prolific personal sites... I try to scan all headlines, but have no qualms about hitting 'mark all as read' for the folder.

I still have 2 or 3 themed folders for groups I want to follow (fellow expats, co-workers, old EditThisPage bloggers), but they're all in readsecond as well. So I can read them either as a group or together with the rest of the feeds. My own feeds (which I read only for testing purposes) also have their own category.

My impression after a couple of days is that I'm reading more efficiently now, although perhaps the week between Christmas and New Year is not a good test.

kleinschreiben ist ausländerfeindlich!

2006-12-29T07:48:26+00:00

(writing in all lower-case is xenophobic!)

Just to air one of my pet peeves onto the Internets... it's hard enough to read websites in a foreign language. It becomes damned near impossible when the author deliberately ignore capitalization and punctuation and uses creative spelling. One of my colleagues writes in such a style (for example, he spells "Berlin" lower-case with a y). I cannot read his weblog at all.

Back when we invented blogging we tried to follow the principles of Dogma 2000, where we would not obsess over grammar and spelling. The flip side (as in the original Dogma 2000) is "do not make mistakes on purpose" and "no intellectual capitals or other strange letter substitutions". Don't deliberately make your writing hard to understand.

Yes, there are funky tests where you can leave out half the letters in your words because most reading is done unconsciously. That only applies to native speakers of your language. Foreign readers need the hooks of proper grammar and spelling to be able to read your words. Don't lock us out.

However, it is perfectly OK to make obscure cultural references that only a native could understand. We thank you for your support.

Christopher in the snow

2006-12-28T09:51:18+00:00

Christopher in the snow. His Christmas wish came true.

Well, not completely true. He actually wished for 2 meters of snow, like we had in Austria last year. He won't get that.

**Update** It's not going to last long. It's afternoon and the snow is already melting.

Fourth Holiday

2006-12-27T06:32:44+00:00

Today is what Christopher calls Third Christmas Day but we adults call The Fourth Holiday (as in The Final Hurdle to be Endured). The day will start with Pancake Cake (à la Pettersson and Findus), then this afternoon it's off to the indoor playground at Fuxi's with a Maulwurf Kuchen (à la Dr. Oetker) where he and the cousins can burn off some energy.

Bleib Gesund!

2006-12-25T14:36:38+00:00

Christopher drew this card for Santa (known in Germany as *Der Weihnachtsmann*): "Christopher wishes that you stay healthy". That wish applies from us to all our readers as well.

Dress Rehearsal

2006-12-23T13:46:05+00:00

Christopher is ready for the dress rehearsal of our church Christmas program.

Christmas Chickens

2006-12-22T13:39:06+00:00

As seen from our driveway this afternoon. At least they haven't crossed the road... yet!

Google Reader

2006-12-22T11:09:13+00:00

I never really mentioned it here, but after a long time of reading blogs in Bloglines, a couple of months ago I tried out Google Reader and never went back. I've now started a link blog using Google Reader's 'shared link' feature (the latest links are in the sidebar here on PapaScott, and there's even a feed).

At any rate, if there was anything Google didn't know about me before, they certainly know it now. I just have to set up Google Aps for My Domain and their control over me is complete.

Schadenfreude

2006-12-21T10:21:22+00:00

We don't talk much about Bundesliga soccer in Hamburg at the moment (Doll muss bleiben!), but if even HSV can't buy a win, at least the year can end on a positive note: Aachen Send Bayern Packing in German Cup. Because a bad night for Bayern is good for everybody else.

OMG WTF LOL

2006-12-20T12:04:19+00:00

The English-to-12-Year-Old-AOLer Translator can be amusing...

W3 HOLD TH3S3 TRUTHS 2 B SELF-EVIEDNT TAHT AL M3N R CR3AETD 3QUAL TAHT TH3Y R ANDOWED BY THEYRE CRAA2R WIT CARTANE UNALEINABL3 RIGHTS TAHT MONG THASE R LIEF LIEBRTY AND TEH PURSUIT OF HAPIENS!!!!!!11 OMG WTF LOL

Unfortunately it only goes one way (via Daring Fireball).

Wish Yourself Away

2006-12-19T19:28:41+00:00

It's probably been around forever, but I just found that our SqueezeBox music player includes a geographic list of online radio stations from RadioGuide. So if you want to pretend you are in Minneapolis or Phoenix or Hamburg or any other place you used to live, you can at least get the soundtrack right (if you can deal with the time difference).

I've spent the evening listening to Cities97, just like we did back in the 80s. Back then their adult contemporary format was revolutionary. These days they're owned by ClearChannel, but they sound remarkably like I remember them in the '80s. It must be the new retro.

All About Us

2006-12-17T15:09:58+00:00

It's a slow news Sunday in December, so everyone is reporting that Time Magazine as picked You. (capitalized with a full stop) as its person of the year. I guess that means we'll have a repeat winner next winner next year, unless they pick themselves (or, as Jeff Jarvis suggests, God).

I guess they didn't tell their sponsors in advance, since the flash ad leading to the story starts with "You might not be Time Person of the Year".

Back In Old Europe

2006-12-16T11:30:31+00:00

The past few weeks I've noticed sporadic outages in the database for PapaScott. A few times a week the database, and thus the blog, has been slow and unavailable for a few minutes. Since Hetzner, a hoster in Germany that has a very good reputation, is having a Christmas special, I decided to move PapaScott there (onto simple webspace, not a dedicated server) from its old home in California and see if things are any better. We've been there since yesterday morning, and except for funny characters in one of the sidebar ads, so far so good.

Dragon Babies

2006-12-14T20:10:41+00:00

Christopher Hanson, 2006, Ball-Point Pen on Ink-Jet Paper

What struck me is that the babies in the eggs have their eyes closed.

Free education is elitist

2006-12-13T02:43:52+00:00

Is free education more elitist than requiring tuition fees? This piece from Free Exchange is worth a long quote.

Until recently, only a small minority in most Western European nations received any post secondary education, even though tuition was low or free in most places. Ironically, the ideal of free education forced the government to institute rationing through non-price mechanisms, in this case by limiting the number of spaces at university. Wealthier children were more likely to get the high exam scores necessary to secure one of these scarce slots.

Recently, these countries have tried to make higher education more widely available. Unfortunately, they have tried to do so on the cheap. This has put a tremendous strain on the resources of these universities, and as a result many talented professors have decamped to America. But the mere mention of instituting or increasing fees incites mass demonstrations of students, who believe the only fair education is free education.

However, fee paying education does not seem to discourage attendance. According the National Centre for Public Policy and Higher Education, 39% of Americans between the ages of 35 to 64 hold a college degree, just behind Canada. This figure is only 25% in the UK, 23% in Germany, 19% in France, and 10% in Italy. They are shrinking towards par in the current generation, but there is no sign that free education is making Europeans more likely to attend college.

Speaking from experience, as a student money for education is a solvable problem... loans, part-time jobs, scholarships, or even joining the military. There are ways around it. But there is no way around not getting a spot in the first place because universities are underfunded.

The trend in Germany right now is to start charging modest fees to students without actually increasing budgets, the quality of education or the number of students. In other words, it's the worst of both worlds.

Could Those Be Angels?

2006-12-12T18:37:36+00:00

We've come to the conclusion that since the 4th Advent Sunday falls on Christmas Eve, Christmas is coming way too soon this year. We'd like to apply for a week's extension.

Christopher has school up to Friday the 22nd, but his special activities (tumbling at school and stutter therapy) have the week before Christmas off, so he has extra time to get excited for Christmas. We adults do not. He's also signed up for the Christmas program at church. He was in a nativity play in Kindergarten last year, playing one of the main roles, Joseph. As a special ed Kindergarten, Mary was in a wheelchair, so he had to both speak lines and push Mary to the stage. This year he's happy to play a supporting role, namely a shepherd. He's got one line, with exactly 6 words:

> And there! Could those be angels!? *(Und da! Sind das nicht Engel!?)*

He was able to borrow a shepherd's staff (actually just a big stick) from church. We need to organize the rest of the costume (floppy hat, vest, dark pants) ourselves. We also have to bring him to dress rehearsal on Saturday the 23rd, which takes care of any last minute shopping we might need to do. We also need to show up early for church on Christmas Eve, but at least we should get good seats.

And if he stutters well enough, he could well double his speaking part! (Yes, it's okay to joke about stuttering. We do it with Christopher all the time. He stutters with all kinds of frogs, sometimes with snakes, and sometimes even with a lawn mower that runs backwards! *Der rückwarts Rasenmäher! R-r-r-r-r-r-r!*)

Your Servers Have A Private Office

2006-12-07T11:31:30+00:00

Today's Dilbert sums up modern system administration.

Mama Nikolaus

2006-12-06T09:00:23+00:00

We once again celebrated the Nikolaus holiday in American fashion, with a Christmas stocking instead of a shoe. As Christopher was enjoying his present before getting ready for school, he suddenly asked:

Mama, were you the Nikolaus?

Yes, he's old enough now for a straight answer.

Pinch My Grits

2006-12-06T05:50:11+00:00

Or in which PapaScott learns first hand of the frailty of bones, tendons and joints in the human body.

It seems that the entire fall I've been dealing with aches and pains of one sort or another. In October it was my right shoulder. It would twinge when I would twist it a certain way (for instance, when backing out of a parking space I reach twist around to look out the back) or when sleeping on my right side. I hadn't injured myself as far as I could remember (altuough thinking back now, it was about that time when I carted off a couple cubic meters of dirt from a pile in the backyard). It seemed to appear by itself, and I hoped it would go away by itself as well.

Three weeks later the pain was still there and it wasn't getting any better, so I finally went to the doctor. I really dislike going to the doctor. For one thing it seems to be such a waste of time to take 2 to 3 hours of my time for a 5 minute office visit. For another I don't like trying to describe ambiguous things like pain in a foreign language. When it comes to anatomy, my German vocabulary fails me and I feel like I'm reduced to pointing and grunting. It has nothing to do with our family doctor himself. He's nice and friendly and knows me by name, which might have something to do with the fact that I'm privately insured.

At any rate, he diagnosed "Periarthritis humeroscapularis" (which I think is Latin for shoulder pain) and prescribed ibuprofin and some toxic metamizol drops. If it wasn't better in a few days, I was to see a specialist for a cortisone shot (to get an immediate appointment, I was to utter the magic words "privately insured"). It did get better, but wasn't completely gone. The thought of a needle in my shoulder doesn't thrill me at all, so I haven't gone in for the shot yet.

In the meantime it's November and a new stabbing pain appeared in my left leg. I first noticed it getting up in the morning, so I thought maybe it was a compensation for no longer sleeping on my shoulder. I didn't notice it at all when standing or walking, but it was there when sitting, and would shoot from my hip down the back of my leg when standing up, when stepping on the clutch when driving, or getting out of the car. It didn't get any better, instead after a couple weeks it seemed to be getting worse.

The worst day was last Friday, when between taking the train to Hamburg, sitting at the children's theatre, going out to eat, then riding home I was on my butt for nearly 5 hours straight. I complained a little bit too loudly, and MamaMaus declared she would drag me to the emergency room first thing in the morning. "But our family doctor has office hours on Saturday." "No, he'd just give you pain pills and send you home."

So on Saturday morning I was at the emergency room. I waited an hour for the intern, who diagnosed a pinched sciatic nerve (Ischiasnerv). He gave me some pain pills (Arthotec and tetrazepam, just enough for the weekend) and sent me home.

The pills worked, but by Monday they were gone and I headed to my doctor to get a real prescription. But the doctor wasn't in. Monday was a national doctors' and pharmacists' strike to protest the proposed health care reform, and the practice was closed. With tears in my eyes, I searched for pharmacy that was open, and asked for something over-the-counter that was similar to Arthotec. That got me through to Tuesday, when my regular doctor was back in. He told me how evil Ulla Schmidt (German Health Minister, author of the health care reform) is and gave me a proper prescription. If it's not better in a few days, I'm to see a specialist.

In the meantime I've done some reading on sciatica, so I know the problem is in my lower back, and that it's a fairly common problem for men between 30 and 50. It will probably go away in a few weeks, anti-inflammatory medication helps, but I'm going to have to pay close attention to my back from now on. I'll have to set up a proper workspace here at home (the MacBook on the kitchen table is handy for watching Christopher, but is murder for the back), take frequent breaks and take plenty of walks. That's all stuff I should be doing anyway, but now I have a constant reminder in my thigh.

Job Wanted

2006-12-05T14:17:50+00:00

Dave is looking for work and wants to stay in Hamburg.

Anyone out there who knows of work in the Hamburg area for an American graphic/web designing, market managing, ex-firefighter please let me know. Check out my resume here.

Christmas Market Monday

2006-12-03T20:35:26+00:00

J decided that tomorrow would be Christmas Market Monday, when we all post pictures from our visits to our local Christmas Markets this past weekend. I usually don't go along with special blogging days, but since we were meeting Oma at the Christmas Market in Buchholz anyway, I brought my camera along. Just to be a non-conformist, I'm posting mine a day early. There's a set at flickr, and a slideshow here. I tried to tell a story with the captions, so maybe the plain view is better than the slideshow (where you have to click on each picture to see the caption).

It would have been funnier to go to the "Santa Pauli" Christmas Market on Spielbudenplatz, which features booths from FC St. Pauli and a various sex shops, since we were in the area on Friday. Actually not, since it was so blatantly commercial and was most definately inappropriate for children. We didn't stop.

Do-It-Yourself Advent Calendar

2006-12-03T11:09:46+00:00

My boss had some problems creating a Advent calendar for his daughter, but luckily Green Haddock has a calendar that anyone (even men) can put together. It's so beautiful, though, you probably won't want to give it away. Happy Advent!

Tip: if you use the 30-pack of Astra Urtyp, you can enjoy your calendar for nearly a week longer!

Ronald Schill, please come home!

2006-12-03T06:48:09+00:00

It's almost like old times... Hamburg's ex-Interior Senator, Judge Merciless, and all-around bad guy Ronald Barnabas Schill is back in the news. According to Spiegel Online, he's wanted by the police! Only as a witness (Honest. We swear!), though, for an old political juvenile justice scandal. Ronnie's hanging out in Brazil, last we heard, so it's doubtful that he'll be showing up for any special committee hearings anytime soon. But it's the thought that counts.

And it's that thought that reminds us of the good old days of politics in Hamburg. Sure, we have another jilted Senator who's started his own party. And we have one-party government that's testing the edge of constitutionality. (Citizen's initiative? We don't like it, we'll just abolish it.) But without the bad man on his side, Ole von Beust is, simply put, boring. (If Berlin's Klaus Wowereit is "poor but sexy", then von Beust is, well, neither.)

On the national level, bad boy Roland Koch has been whipped by Angela Merkel so much he's now a girlie man (so much so that the SPD is sending a girlie girl against him in 2008). When the times of the grand coalition are such that the CDU spends an entire convention pretending to put on a human face, it's no wonder that that disinterest in politics is at an all-time high.

Hamburg needs you. Germany needs you. Ronald Schill, please come home!

No Accident

2006-12-02T20:00:32+00:00

Headline from Spiegel Online:

Accident at Reptile Show: Crocodile Snaps, Circus Director Loses Thumb

Somehow that doesn't sound accidental.

Jim Knopf and Christopher

2006-12-02T13:36:00+00:00

We went to see the musical version of Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivfuhrer at the Schmidt Theatre in Hamburg yesterday. As you can see, Christopher was very happy to have his picture (a scan of a polaroid) taken with the star. We can highly recommend it.

As a bonus, here's the annual Christmas Cookie Cutter picture.

Major Medical Breakthrough

2006-12-01T05:07:24+00:00

In a breakthrough for German medicine, researchers have revealed that cold kidneys do not cause disease. This has the potential to save millions for the German health care system, as until now it has been thought that cold kidneys are the second leading cause of death in Germany, just ahead of being exposed to drafts and behind the number one killer, a range of circulatory disorders known as Kreislaufkollaps.

Research into these conditions has been all the more difficult as they seem only to occur in Germany, and only to afflict native-born Germans. Finding cures could give hope that Germans could achieve of level of health on par with that of the rest of the world, although it would also eliminate the number one topic of conversation in the country. Discussion would then have to resort to other subjects such as other people's poor driving and the condition of the neighbors' gardens.

(A note to my British readers: cold kidney is a fictitious medical condition, and not something you eat.)

Perfect Family Christmas

2006-11-30T22:02:29+00:00

As the first of December approaches and the first Sunday in Advent, I thought we would share this envelope we received in the mail that pictures the perfect family Christmas... in our worst nightmare! If these children show up at your house, have the parents arrested for child abuse. That girl especially... she's either the young Nancy Pelosi or the young Laura Bush.

Are Eggs Liquids?

2006-11-30T20:52:05+00:00

MamaMaus came home today with an odd smell in her handbag. It turned out to be a hard boiled egg that she intended to have as breakfast on Monday, 4 days ago. The handbag is now in the washing machine.

However, since she flew twice to Munich and back this week, we can only wonder... is the egg now contaminated with polonium? And why wasn't it confiscated by security (particularly yesterday) as a forbidden liquid?

Should Americans Be Allowed to Marry?

2006-11-30T19:45:54+00:00

In New Zealand they are not so sure (Quicktime 14MB) (via In Actual Fact, and no, I hadn't seen this before).

Bringing Big Bucks By Blogging

2006-11-29T08:43:37+00:00

A while ago I reactivated Google AdSense on PapaScott. I've never had much success with AdSense, my revenue barely covered the cost of maintaining the weblog (since our employers cover our phone and DSL costs, and my web hoster is prepaid, the running cost of PapaScott is close to zero). I'm not going to make any radical changes to PapaScott (like, say, writing interesting content) just to increase ad revenue. I did run my URL one time through AdsBlackList to filter out low-paying ads, and that seemed to work as advertised. My revenue doubled... from barely $10 a month to barely $20. Nothing to get too excited about.

A couple of months ago I signed up for Text Link Ads (TLA). They sell static links (which can co-exist with AdSense) and pay out 50% of the revenue. You need to be able to add some code to your blog template, so it won't work for a lot of hosters (like BlogSpot). I was shocked to see that they priced my links at $125 each. I was even more shocked when the first two links sold almost immediately. As you can see in the sidebar under "Sponsored Links", I'm currently at six, so you can figure out my revenue yourself. Let's just say it's time for me to consider the tax implications.

I've even had a couple of websites contact me asking if I would sell links or posts directly. No, I don't, the idea is that I don't want to do any work, that's why TLA can keep 50%. But if you want to buy a link, you can check out my listing at TLA. I just opened two more slots, for a limited time only.

Let's face it, the advertisers are buying the links so they can game Google. With PapaScott they get links from over 4000 pages dating back to 1999 with a PageRank of 7 out of 10 (top 20 blogs like BoingBoing might have a PR of 8, you can also check any site's page rank). The links are valuable not because actual people see them, but because they get followed by search engines. My Technorati rank is about 63,000, which is impressive only if you believe there are really 55 million weblogs. There aren't.

Does selling links dilute the value of search engines? Of course it does, but search engines are not a public good. They're big business, earning money from our content, and I have nothing against skimming a little off the top. I don't approve the ads myself, by the way, they just have to meet TLA's guidelines. No sex, drugs or casinos.

It's interesting to see that when selling links, language matters. I noticed a couple of top German blogs (Powerbook Blog, Basic Thinking) listed at Text Link Ads with prices well below $100. I don't know of any German blogs with a Page Rank higher than 6. So when Nicole says noone will read you if you blog in German, she's right. Try Chinese or Korean.

Bild Hamburg Page 6

2006-11-27T12:39:10+00:00

Continuing her series of mentions in the media, MamaMaus has made it to the pages of today's Bild Zeitung (Hamburg Edition). In a list of companies with job openings in Hamburg, her photo is in the top row... and she has the most jobs to offer.

Springtime in the Fall

2006-11-26T15:21:24+00:00

We've got a heat wave for the end of November. Today was 13°C (mid 50s°F), sunny with a mild breeze. The grass is still green, and the air even smells fresh. It could be springtime, if it weren't for all the leaves on the ground to rake. We took a walk this afternoon to appreciate the spring air... Christopher even took his bike (until the mud came). Slideshow

Impressions from Munich

2006-11-23T20:55:10+00:00

Mama and I were in Munich for a 25 hours last weekend. I hadn't been in Munich for a few years, here are a few impressions.

Don't people have anything better to do than walk down the Neuhauser Straße? I know it's the main pedestrian street town, but it was jam packed every time we were there.
We each bought shoes on the Neuhauser Straße, since everyone knows you can't buy shoes in Hamburg. (Inside family joke, ask Kirsten. The punch line, by the way, is "Kassel".)
We saw lots of good food at Dallmayr, Käfer and the Viktualienmarkt, but we didn't buy any. We were tempted by some cheeses, though.
I also heard a lot of foreign languages on the street. I don't mean German dialects like Bavarian or Swabian or familiar foreign languages like we hear in Hamburg (Russian, Turkish, etc.), but languages I don't hear every day like Italian and American English. I'd always thought of Munich as a German ghetto, maybe I've been wrong.
Our formal gala event was held in a riding hall which had been converted to a event center. Around here we still have horses, and riding halls are used for, well, riding.
Heidi Klum was supposed to show up but she was too pregnant. She sent a video, though. The a cappella group Naturally7 performed, and they were quite good.
The absolute highlight were the beds at the hotel. We have never slept so well as at the Hotel Sofitel. Their MyBed is so good they even sell the complete MyBed on the internet, should you want to drop a couple of thousand Euros on a bed. We're tempted to at least buy the pillows and the featherbed. It was that good.

Closed on Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T07:26:54+00:00

If there's one thing you can say that applies to all Americans, it's that you can't say anything that applies to all Americans.

Today is Thanksgiving in the States, but it's not a holiday that I particularly miss. Yes, as a child we celebrated Thanksgiving with a turkey dinner like everyone does, and no, I had no particularly traumatic experiences associated with Thanksgiving. But for me, Christmas was always the highlight of the year. Thanksgiving was more of a WASP thing, and as Scandinavians, we came a couple of centuries late to the party.

My biggest memories of Thanksgiving are a couple of extremely cold bus rides home from college for the long weekend, once in a blizzard, and another time in a blizzard during a bus drivers' strike.

Maybe tonight I'll bring home a some roast turkey cold cuts to enjoy with our German Abendbrot. Happy Thanksgiving, and remember, the dump is closed.

The Pig Revisited

2006-11-23T06:07:05+00:00

My brief note about the return of Floyd of Rosedale to it's rightful home in Minneapolis attracted a few comments, along with a note from my boss that Iowa is now wine country so it no longer needs a bronze pig.

Minnesota football is traditionally mediocre at best, and the Golden Gophers usually can't fight their way out of a paper bag. This year was no different, the Gophers were heading for a losing record until they won their last 3 Big 10 games. Back in the day, 3 Big 10 wins and 6th place was a poor season. These days it's good enough for a bowl game.

'The U' is unique for big public colleges in that it's in the middle of the city, a stone's throw from downtown Minneapolis, and thus school spirit is at a level more fitting for a community college than the Big 10. To make things worse, for the past 20 years home football games are played off campus in a sterile concrete bunker with a plastic roof (the Metrodome). That's been a failure, the University has started constructing a new outdoor stadium on campus. It's too bad they tore down the old one. I distinctly remember the last Gopher football game I saw at the Metrodome. Nebraska came to town, and held the Gophers scoreless. The Cornhuskers scored 3 touchdowns... in each and every quarter. That 84-0, for those who are math challenged.

On the other hand, when Iowa comes to town it's different. In Minnesota we tend to think of Iowa as our less-cultured southern neighbor, and when 30000 Iowa football fans come to the big city with pigs on their heads and mud (or worse) on their shoes, it only reinforces the stereotype. They outdo the Gopher fans in numbers, enthusiasm and volume, so it's like another home game for them. And Iowa usually wins, but not this year.

The story of Floyd of Rosedale recalls a day when things were different, when college football mattered in Minnesota and the Gophers were a national powerhouse. It's also likely the first anti-racism trophy in sports.

We Got The Pig!

2006-11-19T10:02:30+00:00

Who cares about Michigan and Ohio State. Minnesota beat Iowa 34-24, which means we got the pig! It's the only college football game that matters (except on those extremely rare occasions when Minnesota beats Michigan).

Interruptible Power Supply

2006-11-19T08:09:38+00:00

When I take time off from work, disasters seem to happen at a rate of about 50%. One time it was a friendly developer who started a script that brought a server to its knees, another time it was a l33t haxx0r (that's pond scum in plain English). Or a database suddenly becomes too big for its britches and its CPU. Last year when I was the only admin at nu2m I was a lot more concerned about such things, but that that there are 4 of us we should be covered.

Well, maybe we're as far as skill and experience are concerned but not with luck. I took Friday off to accompany my lovely wife to a gala dinner in Munich. (Heidi Klum was supposed to be there, but she's still too pregnant.) We're in our 5-star hotel, we have to leave in 30 minutes, I'm changing into a tuxedo, literally standing in my underwear, when my cell phone rings. Our hoster is replacing the UPS that failed earlier in the week, something went wrong, and we lost power to half our rack in Hamburg. Again.

As an aside, I'm beginning to thing that the 'uninterruptible' in 'uninterruptible power supply' is a cruel joke. I've had far more experience with losing power from a failed UPS or from poor handling of a UPS than actual power outages. The best story is from my old company, when the boss was demonstrating a UPS and cut power to all servers attached to it.

In theory, the important machines have redundant power supplies and will keep running when one circuit goes down. In practice some things always fail (in this case a RAID that should have stayed up but didn't) and need personal attention to get back up and running, especially since we had had an outage earlier in the week and some services had been moved. In my underwear in Munich, though, I couldn't do much for the cluster in Hamburg. However, while we may have some single points of failure for the cluster, I am not one of them. My colleague in Cologne only had to check a couple of small things with me, and had everything back up within an hour.

Employees in Germany are legally entitled to vacation time, so nu2m can't get any ideas about preventing disasters by refusing all my requests for days off. Besides, disasters have also occurred on days I'm not off, so it wouldn't be a sure policy.

Mama in the News

2006-11-16T07:42:52+00:00

MamaMaus prefers that I don't mention her name or employer here, but it's going to be difficult to keep her secret when she gets quoted in the newspaper (Die Welt). I hear she was on the TV news as well (NDR Hamburg Journal).

Full House

2006-11-15T20:17:16+00:00

This morning Christopher asked if he could invite the neighbor boy René over to play this afternoon. Christopher had visited him before fall vacation, and they share a common interest in Legos. We're trying to encourage Christopher to keep contact with his local classmates, since he went to Kindergarten in a different town. Sure, I said, René could come over to play.

Then after lunch, just after we arranged things with René's mother to have him come at 3:00, Johan called. He wanted to come visit Christopher as well. No problem, I thought. He's not the quiet Lego builder type, but three would be more fun than two, so why not?

Then once they were here, and definitely not engaged in quiet activities, Christopher decided to bring Carolin from next door (without asking her mother, as it turned out... she called an hour later asking if we had seen her daughter). She's absolutely not the quiet type, and did her best to raise her volume to match the three boys. So I suddenly had a house full of loud first graders, with nothing to calm them except for orange juice and gummy bears.

Instead of a quiet Lego building session, we had a wild afternoon of riding the wild bucking Ikea styrofoam banana and having ghosts fight against knights in the dark. No one cried, no one got hurt, no one was left out. By 6:00 they were all gone, and Christopher said it had been the "best afternoon".

Compared to a stressful week at work where I've been dealing with defective power supplies and UPSs at our hoster, the noise at home was actually rather relaxing.

Lazy Nigerian Spam

2006-11-13T20:18:12+00:00

Shortest spam ever?

> Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:38:39 -0800
From: "kim" <kimheebum1@jumpy.it>
Subject: QUICK RESPONSE NEEDED
Reply-To: kimheebum4us@yahoo.com.sg

> Dear Sir,

> Can i trust you with a huge sum of money? If yes,reply urgently to get more details.

> Regards,
Kim

>________________________________________
Sfida subito i tuoi amici online! http://www.jumpy.mediaset.it/Canali\_J/Giochi/Directory/Giochi_Multiplayer1.shtml

Not My Pod

2006-11-11T06:59:39+00:00

With the hoopla recently (at least in the Mac fanboy world) over the 5th anniversary of the iPod, it occurred to me that I've never really figured it out. I own a iPod, two actually (a 4G 20GB and a 1G Shuffle), but they are more a source of frustration than of joy. I'm probably too old to get it.

I find the iPod to be a beautiful and fascinating mistress that demands a lot of attention. For one thing, unlike a normal device you just can't turn it off. You have to hit two switches, the wheel to switch off, and the slide to lock it so it stays off. If you forget to lock it, it will bump against something in your pocket or your bag and turn back on, draining all the power.

Even when it is turned off, the thing sucks power. I've found that if I don't listen to it for about a week, the power will be gone. Like I said, the iPod demands attention, daily attention, otherwise it goes into a sulk. More times than not when I want to listen to it, the battery is empty.

By the way, I find the white earpods to be way too pretentious, again fitting of a attention-demanding mistress. I have mine hidden away and use Panasonic basic black.

This whole syncing nonsense doesn't fit into the way I listen to music or use the computer. When I'm home, I listen to music over the air, not through my MacBook or earpods. The mp3 files are on a server in the basement, fed to the speakers with a wireless Squeezebox. I tried keeping a music folder on my notebook synced with the server, but it was a pain and now there's not enough room on the MacBook for a music folder anyway. When I'm away I want to listen to iPod (at least when it has power), so I basically never use iTunes to listen to music.

Since I don't use iTunes to listen to music, it has no idea what I listen to and it's suggestions are useless. I've never bothered with playlists. My listening habits come from a time when music came on vinyl and you listened to a side at a time. At any rate, we have three listeners here at home, and I don't know how iTunes would sort my fine taste in music from that of my wife, and to ignore the stories that Christopher listens to. Needless to say, I haven't rated or tagged any files. That's just yet another demand for attention.

I also find the random shuffle mode to be pretty much useless. When I listen to the Shuffle, I generally click forward to the song I want. It only takes about 50 clicks.

Now I have a new problem. My music collection, or should I say our audio collection, is now 20.5GB. It no longer fits on the iPod. Since iTunes has no idea what I listen to, it has no idea what to sync and leaves all the new music out, which is pretty much the opposite of what I want. Since the iPod already demands too much of my attention in relation to the pleasure it brings, the last thing I want to do is to create a playlist for the iPod.

I'll probably end up buying another one.

Macaca!

2006-11-08T20:29:12+00:00

Noone appreciated my election day humor at lumma.de, so I'll repeat myself here. Nico offered the famous quote:

I tend to think politicians should be changed often, just like diapers, and for exactly the same reason.

He suggested it applied just as well to Germany, to which I replied:

Does that mean grand coalitions need to be changed more frequently?

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Or until the recount in Virginia is over.

We Don't Need No Education

2006-11-08T18:38:51+00:00

From an article on the Jacobs University Bremen (via German Joys), which recently changed its name after receiving a $250 million donations from a certain Herr Jacobs:

German universities lack the resources of their American rivals. The United States spends 2.6 percent of its gross domestic product on higher education; the Germans, only 1.1 percent.

I guess because Germany would rather spend money on the past (like coal subsidies) than on the future. The closing quote was also cute.

Why didnt Mr. Jacobs give his millions to his own alma mater, the University of Hamburg? They didnt ask.

That's Me in the Corner

2006-11-03T07:49:14+00:00

Another pitfall of telecommuting is that they start an internal blog at the office and you don't find out about it until 6 weeks later (no, it's not Technorat). They've been posting profiles of various co-workers, and since I doubt that Poolie will come to Hamburg to interview me, I've decided to save him the trouble.

Your Name:
Scott Hanson

Your Email address:
Email is dead. Mabber me at shanson@mabber.com

Your Age:
44

What do you do for nu2m?
Sysadmin and network plumber in Hamburg, part-time, home-office.

Which page or feed do you read first in the morning?
Overheard in New York.

Last comic read?
This week's Mickey Mouse (out loud for my son Christopher)

Murderer or Objector (Mörder oder Zivi)?
Neither. I refused to register with Selective Service, if that counts.

Do you subscribe to any magzines?
The Economist

Your favorite color?
None. I'm color-blind, my reality is different than yours.

Musical taste?
Not as progressive as I used to be. My earbuds are black.

What do you play?
Mau-mau, Lego Star Wars. And the fool.

What do you do when you are not at the computer?
I play taxi-driver for my son. And with my son.

Color or black and white?
Whatever the director wanted.

Where have you been on vacation?
Lake Superior, Monument Valley, San Diego, Florida Gulf Coast. Mallorca, Prague, Budapest, Istria, Algarve, Leogang, Sylt, Legoland.

Coffee or tea?
Espresso with milk.

Wireless oder cable mouse?
Bluetooth, with two buttons and a wheel.

Favorite clothing color?
Black. I know how it looks.

Favorite perfume?
Jil Sander Sun, but only on my wife.

Which CD and DVD did you last buy?
Do rentals and allofmp3 count?
For Christopher: Räuber Hotzenplotz, Sponge Bob Season 3
For myself: Rosenstolz 'Das Grosse Leben' and Justin Timberlake 'Future Sex Love Sounds', Corpse Bride

Who can you laugh at?
Myself. Usually.

What is on your desktop?
My desk is our kitchen table. In addition to my MacBook there is a flower pot, a sharp knife, several candles, and salt and pepper shakers.

Your last meal:
Hold on, I'm still looking at the menu...

What is your favorite TV series?
No time for TV. Who killed Laura Palmer anyway?

How many pillows do you sleep with?
One, but that's probably not enough.

Hotel or Camping?
Hotel, unless we're looking for adventure.

Your motto?
Everything depends on your point of view.

Who is Herr Latz?
No idea.

Famous last words:
Rosebud

Foreign Holidays

2006-11-01T11:33:54+00:00

One of the pitfalls of telecommuting is that you have no idea where your co-workers are. I just now, at 11:30 am, realized that today is a holiday in Cologne, which explains why no one is sending me any mail or Jabber messages today. They may have more days off in Cologne, but the higher quality of life in Hamburg more than makes up for it.

Speaking of quality of life, Hamburg just had the highest storm tide in 15 years (5.90 meters, which is actually 20 cm higher than the killer flood of 1962, if you're looking for evidence of global warming). If you parked on the Fischmarkt this morning, the inconvenient truth is that your car is now floating in the Elbe (or perhaps more inconvenient, has been impounded by the police).

Update: The flood was actually a meter lower than expected, so no record. They still towed away lots of cars, though.

Expat Pitfalls

2006-10-31T07:24:07+00:00

Slate, "Henry Miller School of Overseas Living for Misanthropes":

Expat scenes invariably have plenty of writers and artists but a curiously scant quantity of writing and art. This isn't a new phenomenon: Ernest Hemingway alluded to it in The Sun Also Rises, when Bill Gorton jestingly upbraids Jake Barnes: "You drink yourself to death," he says. "You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes." George Orwell made a similar observation in "Inside the Whale" (an essay-length riff on Miller's Tropic of Cancer), pointing out that expatriate writers are disproportionately obsessed with "drinking, talking, meditating, and fornicating."

I must be hanging out in the wrong cafés. What, no whining? (via anglofritz)

The Bastardization of German Culture

2006-10-30T21:26:50+00:00

Thanks to the undue influence of American programs in German television, Christopher is insisting that we go trick-or-treating tomorrow night. Super RTL has been running Halloween specials of all their cartoons yesterday and today. He wants to dress as a ghost and collect a sack load of candy. And carve a pumpkin.

I try to tell him that Halloween is an American holiday, and that German households will not be stocking loads of treats, particularly in the rural area where we live, but he says "You're American, Papa. You know how it works."

This is despite the fact we have 3 lantern marches (local town, old kindergarten, new school class) planned within one week starting on Saturday. Of course, lantern marches only involve open flames and songs vaguely related to astrology, which is nowhere near as exciting as collecting sackloads of candy in while dressed in gruesome costumes. Germans do that stuff for Karnival in late winter... well, at least in Cologne and Düsseldorf.

20 km Detour for a Red Light

2006-10-28T20:31:18+00:00

One of MamaMaus' endearing characteristics is how she takes out her frustrations on her car. I admit, it's annoying at times that when we can't locate our destination, she tends to drive faster, thus making it more difficult to find our bearings, and with her Audi Quattro she can accelerate quite quickly when she's mad. As a result we sometimes get involved in some adventures like we did yesterday afternoon, which I can illustrate with the help of Google Maps for those unfamiliar with the Autobahn layout south of Hamburg.

We had taken Christopher to a swim lesson in Harburg (Pool) (it's far from home, but the lessons are flexible), and wanted to make a stop (Furniture Store) to order something on the way home. It was Friday afternoon rush hour, and we knew there was a traffic jam on the A1 heading west to Bremen, so we chose not to take the Autobahn, but rather the side street Bremer Strasse to head to the store (dotted red line). So far so good.

We weren't the only ones with this idea, so there was some traffic on the road. There was also some construction in Iddensen, where they are building a traffic circle to turn off to a garbage dump of all things. So we were later than we wanted to be by the time we reached the intersection with the A1 at Dibbersen (Red Light).

The traffic light had a long red phase. It wouldn't turn green. I don't know if it was extraordinarily long, since I didn't time it, and you don't pull up to a red light expecting to measure how long it takes to turn green. It was at least 3 or 4 minutes. I could hear MamaMaus cursing under her breath, and then somewhat louder. But I didn't suspect what would happen next.

Suddenly she pulled off to the right and onto the onramp for the A1. If she couldn't drive through the red light, she was going to drive around it, I guess. At this point I didn't dare ask her what she was doing, since it would have made her mood worse, and it was too late to stop her anyway. So now we follow the blue line on the map.

I guess she intended to drive to the next exit and turn around, but like I said it was jammed up. So we turn north on to the A261 back to Hamburg. It's clear in our direction, but southbound is jammed for several km leading to the A1. I'm now thinking she'll turn off at Tötensen and take back roads to Dibbersen to avoid the garbage dump and the broken red light. But she shoots on past, and when I ask why she says "I'm not getting back on that road". I then realized what she had in mind.

She was going to circle on the Autobahn all the way around.... from Dibbersen to Marmstorf to Maschen and back to Dibbersen. And that's exactly what we did. I didn't dare say a word, and niether did Christopher.

Ironically, getting off at Dibbersen we turned at the same light that was stuck on red before. The southbound traffic was passing through, and I mentioned something like "oh, the light has changed after all". I didn't get a reply.

Needless to say, by this time all of our moods were fairly sour, and the poor service at the furniture store made them even worse. That pretty much took care of our evening.

NPR Berlin

2006-10-28T16:00:44+00:00

As reported by Anglofritz, National Public Radio is now broadcasting in Berlin on the old Voice of America frequency (104.1 FM). Most programming comes live from the US with a 6 hour time difference. I wonder if they will do pledge drives.

Demonstrating Sensitivity

2006-10-28T12:55:38+00:00

German Joys has been running a short series on Getting Hired or Fired in Germany. This entry explains the differences between an American "letter of reference" and a German "Zeugnis". A Zeugnis is required by law to be positive (at least on the surface), but there are a number code phrases that can be used to express negative opinions. I knew about many of these, but until now I was not aware of the danger of "demonstrating sensitivity to the needs" of my co-workers, and certainly not of the greater danger of showing comprehensive sensitivity.

Buried Treasure

2006-10-24T07:00:26+00:00

Yesterday there were two separate instances in Germany of old munitions being struck by machinery and detonating.

A construction worker was killed in an explosion on the A3 near Aschaffenburg (between Frankfurt and Würzburg). He was scraping concrete about 30 cm deep when he apparently stuck a buried bomb from WWII. Pieces of machinery were thrown up to 500 meters from the site; a number of cars and houses were damaged, but noone was injured. The autobahn was closed for several hours. Stars and Stripes also has report, as US bases are also in the area.
A farmer in Grabow near Dannenberg struck a phosphorus bomb with his plow, dislodging the detonator and releasing a cloud of phosphorus. He immediately called authorities, and they could only watch as the device exploded a short time later. Noone was hurt. It is thought that there are still a number of bombs buried in the area, as an Allied bomber released a full load of bombs before making a emergency landing in Grabow near the end of WWII.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of old bombs are still found every year. Last week over 20000 residents in Hannover were evacuated from their homes to defuse 3 bombs. The NY Times article quotes the owner of a munitions clears firm: "Well have enough work to keep us busy for the next 100 to 120 years".

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. If a rich, developed country is still clearing munitions 60 years after being devestated by war, how long will it take poor countries to recover from war, especially since modern explosives are smaller and harder to find?

Male Bonding

2006-10-23T19:47:35+00:00

Christopher and I returned from our long weekend at Legoland Denmark last night. I hear the weather here in Lower Saxony was good, but up in Denmark it rained cats and dogs. Over the 3 days we had exactly 90 minutes of sun. Good thing we decided against the campground and went for the hostel at Legoland Village, so we were dry and comfortable (and to Christopher's delight, they had PlayStations).

It must have been school vacation in Denmark as the park was full of Danes. They were well prepared for the weather, since all the kids seemed to be wearing slickers and rubber boots. However, it was noticeable in a few places that the end of the season was drawing near. The Lego Shop had only close-out specials (and no Star Wars kits at all, much to Christopher's disappointment), and the Mindstorms Workshop was closed for renovation. Otherwise we had a great time. We'll be back next year... the Lego traffic school starts at age 7, and Christopher wants his driver's license!

Mama had constant rain for her conference in Lisbon as well. We all returned home late Sunday evening, and lo and behold, today it has rained the whole day here. We're unsure whether it's Portuguese rain that followed her home, or Danish rain that followed us. In either case, it's wet.

Vote!

2006-10-19T11:10:21+00:00

My absentee ballot for the November election arrived today. The fine folks at the Maricopa County Elections Department in Arizona are very good in that regard, I don't even have to request it. The races aren't all that exciting, Jon Kyl will be easily re-elected to the Senate and the Democrats don't even have a candidate to face Jeff Flake in my House district, but it's the thought that counts.

If you're an expat and still need an absentee ballot, you can get more information at Overseas Vote Foundation (non-partisan) or VoteFromAbroad.org (sponsored by Democrats Abroad) or Republicans Abroad.

McCafe Elmshorn Reloaded

2006-10-17T16:31:46+00:00

(I'm recycling this post from September 2005 for the sake of Creamaid. It's still interesting since McCafes are not yet being built in the US, so the idea of a coffee bar inside a McDonald's will be new to a lot of people. It also shows off how to embed a Flickr slideshow in a blog post. And ten bucks is ten bucks.)

These are pictures from the McCafe in Elmshorn, northwest of Hamburg. It's a coffee bar inside a regular McDonald's restaurant, and the idea is relatively new in Germany, although it apparently hasn't gone over well in the US. Here they seem to be redoing the entire restaurant rather than creating a separate coffee area. In Elmshorn you sit on leather seats whether you are eating a Big Mac or drinking a Latte.

McDonald's seems to be quite happy with the results. As of October 2006 170 German restaurants feature McCafe, and eventually about half of all restaurants will include one.

We took some pictures (link to slideshow).

Make Money At Home With Blogging

2006-10-16T06:33:31+00:00

Earn $10 from home!
Simply write about McDonalds for your blog. We'll see if they also take old posts. :-)(via MetaFilter)

Travel Plans

2006-10-13T18:29:24+00:00

I won't be at the Whiney Expat Meetup in November. MamaMaus needs me to accompany her to her firm's annual charity auction, this time in Munich. I'll again need to rent a penguin suit. The next day we've been invited to a 100th birthday party. The proprietors of the Naturheilzentrum Drochtersen (there's a free link for you Kirsten :-)) and their daughter have their birthdays on the same day, and their ages add up to 100. Ten years ago they celebrated their 75th birthday(s), it's amazing how the time flies. (Math puzzle: how old is their daughter this year?)

Meanwhile, the two-week fall school vacation starts, um, now. MamaMaus has a 4-day engagement in Lisbon this week, so we men are going to sneak away as well... for 3 days in Denmark. We didn't see all of Legoland the first time we were there, so Christopher and I have to check out all the things we missed.

Tomorrow we're taking a day-long joyride to Hannover. Mama has business there, and since her Audi doesn't have enough horsepower for Christopher, we'll take the high-speed ICE train, even though it takes longer. It's not hanging around bored in train stations waiting for our connection, it's conducting observational studies of consumer traffic patterns for retail space in a metropolitan transit center. Oh joy!

Our big plan for fall vacation for Christopher though is swimming lessons. He's hoping to earn his Seepferdchen (little sea horse) patch by swimming 25 meters. Well, we're hoping for that anyway.

Internet Killed the Video Star

2006-10-09T21:01:57+00:00

When I was in high school in the '70s, you could only see good music on TV late night on weekends on shows like Don Kirschner's Rock Concert or The Midnight Special. Some bands started to make little films that went along with their music, and (according to my friends) I said that would someday the all the rage, that watching music would be bigger business than listening to music. My friends said I was crazy, but some years later MTV was born. I never saw a cent from Viacom. (I actually don't rememeber saying that, but my high school friends insisted I was a true visionary. They also said I was a cross between Spock and Alfred E. Neuman, so I can never be sure if they were putting me on or not.)

Of course these days noone watches music, MTV doesn't even show music videos anymore, they're all pirated and downloaded to YouTube. I always thought YouTube was a stupid idea, playing other people's videos that nobody pays for. How do they make any money? I guessed I missed the point, since today Google is buying YouTube for $1.65 billion, even though "YouTube right now generates very little, if any, actual revenues, analysts say".

So if any of my old friends are reading, I've lost the touch. I have no idea what's cool anymore.

Comeback

2006-10-08T18:14:37+00:00

After a devastating injury at her first 10K run in July, MamaMaus today ran 10K at the local Jesteburger Volkslauf. The weather was cool and pleasant, and the route was mostly on soft trails rather than aspahlt. Her goal was 70 minutes, and she hit it almost exactly (70:30). She got a certificate and an official finish photo.

Google Patriotism

2006-10-03T13:44:59+00:00

The German version of Google at google.de has a nice German flag logo to celebrate the Day of German Unity holiday today (as pointed out by Telagon Sichelputzer). However, if you have English set as your language, you see only the normal Google Deutschland logo.

The main site google.com doesn't show a special logo in either language.

Strange. Is this a mistake, or does Google Deutschland think celebrating German reunification is only for German speakers?

Hans, Are We the Baddies?

2006-10-02T18:25:58+00:00

The British have always had a somewhat disturbing obsession with Nazis, but the comedy sketch The Anxious Nazis from That Mitchell and Webb Look is perhaps a sign they are getting over it (translation: it's both poignant and funny as hell). You don't suppose they're really talking about the war on terror, do you? (via Spreeblick)

Don't Get Pregnant in Europe

2006-10-01T11:28:17+00:00

Raskal Trippin wants a logo to warn expat women Don't Get Pregnant in Europe. She's had to defend herself for not drinking, avoiding coffee, simply being American, and then there's the insensitive receptionists:

(We need) an image that effectively communicates to OB/GYN receptionists that the correct response to "I've had a positive pregnancy test and would like to schedule appointment as soon as possible" is not "Do you plan to keep it?" (And people wonder why folks don't have kids in Germany?)

A Don't Get Pregnant in Europe logo - It's just a pain having to explain the differences on both sides of the ocean. Even if it costs 5 euros compared to the 5000 euros it would cost back home, don't do it.

Microwave Chocolate-Chip Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick

2006-09-30T07:00:35+00:00

No comment.

2006-09-29T12:30:04+00:00

Yesterday the German Interior Ministry announced the introduction of a personal id card for foreign residents, an Aufenthaltskarte similar the the Personalausweis issued to German citizens. I'm not so hot about all my personal data on a digitally readable smart card, but it will be practical to be able to leave my passport at home when I want to buy a phone or rent a video.

Germany Invaded By Giant Insect

2006-09-29T10:57:34+00:00

I should pay better attention to Slashdot, then I would have known that Germany has been invaded by a giant insect. The proof is at Google Maps. Good thing that I saw this at Transblawg, I might still have time to protect our home by activating our giant insect defences.

I Sleep

2006-09-29T10:10:43+00:00

NDRInfo radio this morning broadcast a short profile of Volkswagen brand chairman Wolfgang Bernhard, the cost-cutting manager who formerly worked for Chrysler in the US. He's apparently very dry and businesslike. When asked the difference between working in the US and in Germany, he replied:

In Germany I am called Dr. Bernhard, in the US I was called Wolfgang. Otherwise the problems are just the same.

An attempt to make the interview more personal failed. "How do you relax in your spare time?"

I sleep.

Starbucks Too Late

2006-09-27T18:57:08+00:00

Starbucks has finally arrived in Hamburg, about a decade too late (photo stolen from Anke Gröner, I hope she doesn't mind... it's not like I ever get to downtown anymore).

Water Slide

2006-09-26T04:45:24+00:00

Yesterday could be the last nice sunny day we have this year, so I took Christopher back to Planten un Blomen in the afternoon, this time with his swimming suit. I sat on the sidelines and read Bloglines Mobile.

We were there 3 hours, I hope he was tired out.

OpenBC to become Xing

2006-09-25T06:50:35+00:00

It's so hard to keep a secret these days, just ask lonelygirl15. OpenBC, the business and social networking site based in Hamburg, will be changing its name to Xing later this month. This was confirmed in the OpenBC blog after a couple of webloggers found the name in domain and trademark searches. The goal was to have a domain more meaningful in Asia and English-speaking markets. OpenBC wasn't real clear, it sounds like a group of Old Testament historians.

Xing might be a good fit in Chinese (it means "I can do it", so I hear), but I don't think it works as well in English as they think. They are thinking of "crossing" as on traffic signs (Ped Xing, RR Xing). I don't think the abbreviation is used outside of the US. And used by itself, the association with crossing is unclear, particularly if you pronounce it as "Zing". Even if one does think of a "crossing", I don't think the panic of one about to be blindsided by a train is the emotion they are trying to evoke.

On the other hand, it could have been worse. They could have chosen "Xingr".

(Note to self: should I ever be looking for a full-time local employer in the future, OpenBC, er, Xing sounds like a cool place to work.)

Playground at Planten un Blomen

2006-09-24T19:40:18+00:00

MamaMaus had to work today, but she took us along to Hamburg so we could go watch ice hockey. But the highlight for Christopher was the big playground (St. Petersburger Straße) at the Planten un Blomen park. It was new for us, too. They have a lot of water toys, (hand pumps, dams with trenches, even a water slide) and it was so warm today he was sorry we didn't bring his swim suit.

Stutter Group

2006-09-21T20:48:56+00:00

After having had the summer off, Christopher had his first speech therapy session today. A clinic in Hamburg has started a stutter group for children aged 6 to 8 with 2 therapists and 9 children that will meet for 90 minutes every Thursday. The therapy has a large social component, simply bringing them together so they can experience first hand that *other kids stutter too*. That will be a new experience for Christopher, even in the special speech kindergarten he was the only stutterer. The experience is important for us parents as well... *other parents have children who stutter*.

The group seems to have gotten off to a good start. I didn't wait around the whole 90 minutes, but when I came back 15 minutes before the end the room was quite loud. They were having a pillow fight, and after the session Christopher and 4 of the boys were happy to start an extra round. The group is 8 boys and 1 girl... I hope the girl doesn't get scared off. Two or three of the boys are Turkish... that's good, since his school class is rather homogeneous.

Reminder to self: I need to make an appointment with the pediatrician to get a prescription/referral for the group sessions, so that health insurance will cover the costs.

Trash your computer

2006-09-21T17:24:34+00:00

Ongoing, Trash your computer

These days, I want to stuff my Dell in the nearest trash compactor and do everything on my Blackberry. The computer, its real work to manage, and I can read whatever anyone sends me on the Blackberry, almost. Is this the future?

Baltic Whackjobs

2006-09-18T15:11:08+00:00

In elections yesterday in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the poorest German state, the far-right National Democratic Party earned 7.3% of the vote, enough to enter parliament. As always when the far-right does well in an election, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the German media. Doug Merrill at A Fistful of Euros is not quite so hysterical:

On the whole, though, Id be cautiously optimistic... in a state with 18 percent unemployment, the extremist vote was below 10 percent. ... the far right has ebbed and flowed throughout the postwar period, and its never gotten anywhere close to a share of power at the national level... (finally) the far right tends to fractiousness, as the disintegration of the NPD parliamentary party in Saxony in late 2005 most recently showed.

One in 14 voters in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is willing to cast a ballot for right-wing whackjobs. That, for better or for worse, is probably not too far from the European norm.

Neo-Nazis aren't interested in politics, they just like the sound of their own voice. I'd be more worried about the low turnout (59.2%), which means a good share of the voters aren't interested in politics either.

Gammelgemuse

2006-09-16T19:25:50+00:00

For 3 weeks now we've been hearing about the tons Gammelfleisch, or putrid meat, being found in the meat lockers of Germany, and how long the authorities knew about it before it was made public. The best comment I saw on it was at Rainy Day, which cited The Jungle, the classic American exposé of conditions in the Chicago stockyards in 1906. Noone has died or even gotten sick from bad meat in the current German scandal, although that's hard to tell from the sensationalist press coverage.

Meanwhile in the States, fresh bagged spinach tainted with E. coli has killed one and sent nearly 100 to the hospital in several states over the past few weeks, including several brands of organic spinach. So, my German friends, don't think you're any better off if you skip meat and eat only vegetables from the Bioladen. You're taking chances no matter what you eat.

One of the things I first noticed here was the rancid smell in some (but not all) German butcher shops. I used to clean a meat market as an after-school job, so I know what a clean meat market looks and smells like. I still feel more comfortable with meat from the supermarket than from a butcher who may have different ideas of cooling and sanitation than I'm used to.

How to keep your cell phone from disrupting family time

2006-09-16T13:27:41+00:00

On Balance, the Washington Post blog on "Juggling Work and Family" Five Tricks to Tame Technology:

Don't like your Treo buzzing at dinner? The solution is pretty simple. Shut it off. Or throw it into the Potomac. You own the device, not the other way around.

(via parent hacks)

Han Shot First. Really.

2006-09-14T18:46:32+00:00

My son was born 30 years to late to believe it, but kottke gets it right. The movies don't have numbers, they're called Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi. Some lame prequels came later. And Han shot first. Really.

I doubt that I'll buy the new original version DVDs, though. How much money does George Lucas need, anyway.

GEZ: The Coinslot on your PC

2006-09-14T05:41:03+00:00

The powers that be in German public broadcasting are currently deciding how to collect fees from computer users starting in 2007. Public broadcasting is currently financed by fees from TV and radio owners, 17.03 a month per household or business (5.52 for radio only). It's kind of like pledge week for US public television, except it's mandatory and there's no pledge week. There's a whole bureaucracy set up to collect the fees called the *Gebühreneinzugszentrale der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten*, or GEZ for short. They advertise quite a bit with spots that try to be hip, if you can imagine it could ever be hip to pay TV fees, since their main source of new income seems to be students who live away from home.

Now that video and audio streams are available on the internet, so the logic goes, then "internet-capable" devices should also be subject to the broadcast fee, namely PCs and UMTS cell phones. Those that already pay GEZ fees would not pay any more, however any household or business with a computer would have to start paying in January. At the TV rate, that would be like an internet tax of over 200 per year with absolutely zero benefit. As a compromise, the ARD is proposing to tax PCs at the radio rate. The ZDF might be against that, since the ZDF has no radio broadcasts.

I have nothing against subsidizing broadcasting, even if it seems to be aimed more at senior citizens than the general population. Maybe by the time I'm a senior citizen, they'll broadcast punk concerts instead of *Volksmusik*. But the whole GEZ is an archaic concept. TV and radio are no longer luxury goods, but public goods, and the subsidy should be paid by everyone by taxes, not just viewers and listeners. Then the whole collection apparatus could be done away with, and there would be no need for an internet tax.

Moral Equivalence

2006-09-12T18:27:31+00:00

I wasn't going to write anymore on 9/11 this year, my entry on Sunday pretty much summed up how I feel 5 years later. But 2 posts from German blogs that usually don't discuss politics really got under my skin.

Telagon Sichelputzer, True 9/11 Memorial:

With all due respect to the losses to the attack on the World Trade Center back in 2001, lets remember all of the victims of this attack on the USA. And let us not forget all the murder, death and rape committed by many US troops for seeking vengeance in their war efforts while traveling from one country to another. Lets not forget the crimes of Afghanistan and Iraq in their search for Bin Laden. Lets not forget Guantanamo and the secret CIA torture chambers.

Quarter Life Crisis, September 11th:

And from here, away from the personal tragedy, I find it hard to see the death of thousands of people in North America as something more tragic than the death of similar numbers of people in other parts of the planet... those who died in New York did get a lot of more press coverage and they had to serve as an excuse for all the disgraces that our governments particularly the U.S. one have brought over us since in the name of fighting terrorism, something that sounds simple but which most, if not all, people cannot even define clearly.

If I were to make similar comments about the Holocaust and, say, the firebombing of Dresden, I'd be (rightfully) run out of the country on a rail. Or is that just me and my blue passport that makes me so sensitive?

Santana on the Mound

2006-09-10T19:57:44+00:00

10 strikeouts for Johan Santana. It'd be nice if the score holds up... but watching the Twins live from my dining room table in Germany. Isn't the Internet grand? Too bad they don't play more afternoon games, the 7 hour time difference makes night games somewhat unpractical... :-)

Update: They held the lead... 12-1 the final.

Smart and Stupid

2006-09-10T19:44:53+00:00

Laura of 11D, Bridging the Gap Between Smart and Stupid:

There is a growing gulf between smart and stupid on the Internet. This blog does its best to keep a foot in both camps.

Funny thing is, there's so much stupid stuff going on the Internet that you can't guess which one she's talking about until you follow the link.

Five Years

2006-09-10T12:10:06+00:00

Jeffrey Zeldman, Five Years:

Ive dug up some things I wrote from New York City and posted here on September 11th 2001 and in the first days following... These mini-essays are not art. They are not reportage, either (but what is?), and may not even be accurate. We were all a bit dazedalthough not so dulled as now. The shock and sorrow were fresh. The events of September 11th had not yet been branded, nor turned into tools of partisan rancor, nor made into a mini-series, nor used to justify atrocity.

I guess the same applies to what I wrote then, from far away. Sometimes I'd just rather forget that day.

23rd Anniversary

2006-09-10T08:34:26+00:00

On this weblog I missed our wedding anniversary on the 6th, that day 23 years ago when we were still young, dumb and excited. Here I tend to forget our anniversary as often as I remember. We didn't forget it in real life though. On Wednesday morning MamaMaus and I managed to exchange a couple of heartfelt SMS messages.

Aliens at Roswell

2006-09-09T06:44:35+00:00

They *are* among us. Immigration arrests 15 aliens in Roswell working for U.S. military contractor. Now that's what I call outsourcing.

Via newsrack.

Grade School Week One

2006-09-08T22:26:10+00:00

Well, it didn't take long for this school stuff to become old hat. Already on Wednesday morning Christopher said he didn't feel like going to school today. Heh heh, son, welcome to the next 12 years of your life. Things don't seem to be going fast enough for him. I asked him today what he learned at school, and he replied "Nothing new". My mother says that sounds like me in the first grade. He was looking very forward to learning to read, and I think he's disappointed that it will take longer than one or two days. "We don't do any reading, all we do are letters of the alphabet. I know those already." Patience, young Christopher, patience.

We are of course concerned of how the class reacts to stuttering. We mentioned it briefly at the parents' evening last week, and hopefully we can meet with his teacher in the next week or two to explain Christopher's stutter and the progress he's made. Meanwhile, a clinic recommended by his kindergarten offers a weekly stutter group for children aged 6 to 10 that will start later this month. Their main goal is to give the kids (and their parents) the feeling that they are not alone... there are other kids that stutter as well. That's more important at his age than working on specific speaking and breathing techniques, since his mouth is still growing and changing. The group is in Hamburg, so that will mean some driving every week. We've also got to get a referral from his pediatrician so health insurance will cover the cost, so that's another appointment to be made this coming week. We also hope to arrange for him to get into a special PE (sport) group at school, since movement and exercise is also important for speech development.

So Christopher may already be bored with school, but we've still got plenty to arrange and organize.

New Hamburg Expat Blogger

2006-09-08T07:16:44+00:00

We now have a new expat blogger in Hamburg... Emily, who arrived in town this week. Welcome to the most beautiful city in the world*. It takes a few months to become a real whiney expat, but welcome to the club!

(when the sun shines, which is about 2 weeks a year. The 2 weeks for this year are already done. But we've still got several dozen rainy days to go yet.)

PapaScott Sells Out

2006-09-07T19:53:43+00:00

A couple of days ago I reinserted Google AdSense ads on my archive pages. If after my complaining about Google in China anyone thinks I'm selling out, they're right.

Spiegel Online Relaunch

2006-09-06T18:57:21+00:00

Thanks to Heiko for pointing out that Spiegel Online has relaunched (yet again). My first impression is... I like it. They've made a subtle change in the typography that makes it easier to read. For better or for worse, the SpOn sidebar in Firefox is the first place I look for German news. Maybe Heiko can tell me if Focus has a sidebar as well. Or Die Zeit, Nico?

Poor Organization

2006-09-06T05:18:49+00:00

How can you tell you've been in Germany too long? When you think the Dutch are poorly organized.

More Einschulung

2006-09-03T19:38:32+00:00

As I mentioned before, starting school is a big deal here in Germany, with ceremony, presents and family gathering on par with baptism, confirmation or graduation. There was even a church service before the official ceremony at the school, so here's Christopher at the church with his *Schultüte*.

Einschulung

2006-09-02T19:07:29+00:00

Two years ago he was holding his invitation to kindergarten. Today on the same spot he's holding a Schultüte, a cone filled with presents and candy for the first day of school. This time he decided not to smile.

Homework

2006-09-01T18:47:31+00:00

Christopher working on his first homework assignment, a flower that is to be colored for the Einschulung tomorrow. He was supposed to color one leaf each day for 10 days, but he must take after Papa... he put everything off until the last minute.

His original Lego Bionicle Schulranzen (schoolbag) is in the background, loaded with the required materials. All systems are go!

Elternabend

2006-09-01T06:11:57+00:00

This school stuff is starting to get serious. We had our first *Elternabend* (parent's evening) at the school in Jesteburg last night in preparation for the *Einschulung* (start of first grade) on Saturday. (*Einschulung* is a big deal... more on that later.) This is my first experience with the German school system, and here are a few things that struck me.

* Classes are referred to by number... Christopher is in the class 1C. As I recall our classes were referred to by name, which can be confusing if Miss Crabtree becomes Mrs. Fletcher in the middle of the school year.

* The class size is 18, down from the announced 20. We suspect the principal was gaming the system by adding phantom children to the list of first graders to ensure there would be 4 classes instead of 3.

* We had to prepare folders for 4 subjects: German, Math, Science and Social Science *(Sachunterricht)*, and Religion and Music. Sport is also a subject, but has no folder.

* The class will stay together and have the same teacher for all four years in the *Grundschule*.

* School materials (folders, scissors, paper, etc.) are organized by the teacher and paid for by the parents. This is in addition to the exact list of materials (pencils, crayons, paints) that we were told to buy. The first contribution was 35 per child, with more to come.

* Class for first graders is from 8:30 to 12:00. There's a breakfast break at 10:00 (bring your own). As a special service to working parents, you can apply to have your child be supervised an extra hour, until 1:00.

* Since Lüllau is 4.5 km away from Jesteburg, Christopher will take the bus to school. There's no bus schedule, you have to just know when the bus comes (luckily, we know it comes at 8:10). All the first graders from Lüllau are in the same class.

* Parents were asked to volunteer for crossing guards, library, computer help, crafts, or field trips.

Chopin Vodka

2006-08-30T01:32:05+00:00

MamaMaus was on a 3-day business trip to Warsaw (the business was only one day, but extra activities and stupid connections meant she was gone 3 days), but unlike her numerous Munich trips, she brought home a nice present... a bottle of Chopin Vodka. The coolest thing about it is the packaging.

There you can see the composer looking out a hole in the box. He's actually printed on the back of the bottle. And I don't even like vodka.

The German division of her company was incorporated into a "Central European district" last year, so she's having more to do with Eastern Europe. This was her first trip to Poland, and she came back excited, about both the culture in Warsaw, and how well they do business.

(Update: Did I mention that she (and I) have had the schedule from hell since going back to work? She was on the road 8 out of 9 days, including the entire weekend, while Christopher was home with school vacation and we were stuck in he house because it rained nearly every day? Maybe we both need the vodka more than we know!)

Skipping School

2006-08-28T19:36:23+00:00

I doubt if Christopher's first day of first grade on Saturday will be anything like this

Ah, the first day of school. Catching up with friends you have not seen all summer. Hoping that none of your teachers assign homework on the first day of school. Dreaming of the first snow day. Getting suspended.... Well, I normally tried to avoid the last one, but last week, 128 out of 1200 students at Morton High School were sent home for wearing inappropriate clothes.... baggy pants, low-cut shirts, tank tops, graphic T-shirtsand cell phone use.

So if you wear the wrong clothes, you get to skip school. I would have loved to have known that when I was in high school.

Pennant Race

2006-08-27T10:09:00+00:00

The last few times we've visited the States, a highlight for Christopher has been a baseball game, a visit to the "big stadium", as he puts it. We first took him to see Tampa Bay when he was 3, and a year later he still remembered the stadium when we saw it from the freeway. Of course he mostly enjoys the stadium experience, like hot dogs, ice cream in a mini-helmet, and cotton candy that makes your tongue turn blue.

This year we saw the Twins play Cleveland the night before we flew home, sitting behind the visitor's bullpen. Christopher's started to pick up some to pick up some details of the game, and he now has a favorite position, namely catcher. Specifically, the bullpen catcher (so it has nothing to do with the Joe Mauer hype). He was fascinated by the catcher's gear and how he caught the ball and threw it back to the pitcher, and spent an entire inning pantomiming those motions. Good thing the Cleveland bullpen was busy... the Twins won 7-2.

Last night I was checking out baseball highlights (I'm a MLB TV subscriber, and it works much better now on the MacBook now that flip4mac supports Intel). Christopher asked if we could watch some catchers in action. Of course, the highlights tend to show hits and not the catcher catching to ball and throwing it back to the pitcher, so we found a live game (Cubs and Cardinals) so he could cheer every pitch that was not a foul ball or a hit. I tried to explain out the game works (one linguistic problem, when I said the batter was out, he asked whether the game had ended, since in German when a game is "out" it's over). We were talking so much that MamaMaus was wondering whether we were watching baseball or playing it.

This morning at 3 I woke up and remembered that Johan Santana was pitching against the White Sox, and got up to watch him pitch for a couple of innings. That was a mistake... I ended up watching nearly 2 hours. the Twins blew a 3 run lead, with Nathan giving up 2 run homer in the 9th, but the Twins won in the 11th. No matter what happens today, the "pirahnas" will leave Chicago leading the wild-card race. They're now only 4 games behind Detroit, and since the Tigers seem to be fading, anything can happen before the playoffs.

This afternoon Christopher and I are on our way to the big stadium again, this time to watch HSV play Hertha, our first live Bundesliga match. Christopher thinks soccer is nice, but nowhere near as much fun as baseball.

Nico Ballmer

2006-08-25T19:39:09+00:00

My employer has posted a recruiting video for web developers featuring my boss Nico on YouTube. I hope developers will come work for us anyway. (You can get by without German, and the office is in Cologne, the second nicest city in Germany.)

MacBook Blue Screen

2006-08-24T08:38:25+00:00

My MacBook wouldn't wake up this morning, and worse than that, it wouldn't even start. It would chime and get stuck on a blue screen, the default background color (nicer than Windows blue screen), similar to the problem described here.

I started from the Install DVD, and after that the installed system started up just fine, but it was unnerving nonetheless. So Macs really do crash... :-)

Captain Christopher

2006-08-23T22:34:00+00:00

No, that's not a GPS navigation system on the dashboard, it's a fish locator.

The Captured Flea (or The Prisoner Fled)

2006-08-21T10:51:38+00:00

You might think German is such a precise language, with all the genders and spellings for noun cases, that capitalizing nouns is a waste of time. Not so... bronksi.net has some examples involving birds, spiders, blisters and fleas of why it's important to mind the capitalization.

Ciao Bella Open Air

2006-08-19T18:45:15+00:00

Just 24 hours after our return to Germany, our neighbor is holding an open-air concert in his farmyard, with the band Ciao Bella touring from Texas. We've never had any concerts in Lüllau that I can recall.

Maybe I should offer not to report the noise to the police in return for free beer.

Back Again

2006-08-18T17:43:01+00:00

We're back in Germany, in body if not yet in spirit. The brain takes a couple of days to catch up.

Our return with Northwest Airlines was a mixed bag. Internet check-in and seat selection is cool. Flying 25-year-old DC-10s in this day and age is not. We arrived 3 hours before take-off, taking the travel advisories into consideration, but despite the warnings ecurity was so fast we ended up consuming liquids in the airport bar for 2 hours before boarding.

My Brother Dave

2006-08-11T02:10:26+00:00

By the way, my brother's name isn't really Dave.

It could be worse, it could be raining...

2006-08-10T23:21:14+00:00

For our return flight to Germany next week, not only do we have to worry about flight attendants creating CHOAS for Northwest Airlines but now we can no longer carry liquids in our carry-on luggage. It seems you don't actually have to commit a terrorist act to disrupt airline travel, merely talking about it within earshot of a police wiretap seems to be enough. But it could be worse (scroll to first comment)...

At least Richard Reed didn't strap C4 to his crotch, I'd hate to see what that would have done to the airport lines.

Ouch.

Wherever we go, that's where we are

2006-08-04T19:07:51+00:00

Christopher fishing with Grandpa on his first day in Minnesota (direct link).

I'll have to take back all the bad things I've said about Northwest Airlines. Our flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis was our best flight ever to the States. The A330 is comfortable even in coach, and the entertainment system kept Christopher well occupied. And entry through immigration and customs in Minneapolis was also the fastest we've experienced, 10 minutes including waiting for luggage.

Update

They caught one.

Update 2

This is where we are

We're Outta Here

2006-08-02T14:36:36+00:00

We're almost gone. We have a 6 am flight out of Hamburg in the morning, so we have to set the alarm for 3:30 or so. But with only one connection (our bet that NWA would keep flying paid off), we get to Minneapolis at 11:45 am, so we'll have the whole day in front of us, so to speak.

Like last year, we'll be at the lake with my parents. No landline, no cell coverage, no DSL, 1 TV channel. There are neighbors with open WLANs, so maybe we can sneak online once in a while. Or maybe not.

Men Not Working

2006-08-01T18:23:19+00:00

NY Times: Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job. "Millions of men... between 30 and 55 have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work", choosing instead to drain savings, take disability, or rely on their wive's income. The result is "a larger share of working-age men are not working today than at almost any point in the last half-century". Is the US catching up with the EU in regards to long-term unemployed? (via Brannon Denning at InstaPundit)

Immersion

2006-08-01T06:34:24+00:00

We're getting ready for our trip to the States, and given that it was 103°F (with humidity to match) at the lake on Sunday (where it's supposed to be cooler than in town), we'll be packing very light. Good thing the weather broke on Monday... it should be down to 85°F by the time we're there.

I'm wondering whether this would be a good time to start speaking English with Christopher again. When Christopher was born, we tried splitting languages with him, MamaMaus speaking German, I speaking English, but I must admit I was not very consistent. We've spoken German at home since we came to Germany (at first to help me learn German) that I had a hard time switching back and forth, especially with a child too young to answer back. Then Christopher's speech problems emerged, and we (I) got gun-shy and stopped English altogether.

One of the first things we learned was that speech problems in general, and stuttering in particular, have nothing to do with a bilingual home. We (I) still held off with English. There was no good reason for it, but with the stress of therapy and the goal of increasing self-confidence, we didn't want to compound the stress by reintroducing a second language.

Maybe this trip would be a good catalyst to get started again. He'll get going again once we're there, and when we come back I can tell him I'm tired of speaking German and will speak English at home from now on. He can answer in whatever language he wants (that will be German, for sure). To help me stay consistent, I'll have to start speaking English with MamaMaus as well, but I think she can handle that.

Does anyone with experience raising bilingual children have any thoughts or suggestions on reintroducing English?

2006-07-28T10:26:22+00:00

Wal-Mart Stores to exit Germany after 8 years, selling their 85 locations to the Metro Group and taking a $1 billion write-off. Their culture was alien to both employees and consumers, and they never grew big enough to compete with established discounters like Aldi.

Update There's a nice discussion (in German) on why Wal-Mart failed at the Shopblogger.

Money Quote

2006-07-27T04:33:03+00:00

There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money; that's just not why most people use communication tools. </p>

Anil Dash on weblogs and money, and he was even considerate enough to put this statement in bold so I wouldn't miss it.

Beat The Heat

2006-07-26T17:05:32+00:00

Garret P. Vreeland has some heat beating tips from New Mexico that are applicable to the current German heat wave as well.

Wear a hat.
Carry an umbrella.
Use a hand fan.
Little bandana things with gel inside.
Use light moisturizers and sunscreens.
Loose, light-colored clothing.
Open footwear.
Navigate from shade to shade.

I can only add that it's as much about attitude as anything else. Germans love to piss and moan, but pissing and moaning won't make you feel any cooler. The attitude that you can do something about it will.

I'm PapaScott, and you're not

2006-07-26T16:19:03+00:00

I just had to try the free video publishing service at hellodeo (via LifeHacker).

Scaling the Pings

2006-07-26T07:07:44+00:00

Remember those 60000 pings per hour I complained about last week? My colleague Lars said he wants them at 85.114.159.59 for some Ruby project he's working on and is supposed to be ready "real soon now".

Whatever he's doing, I hope it scales.

Top 5 Social Media Tools

2006-07-24T20:00:51+00:00

My boss has kindly requested that I blog my 5 most used social media tools. On the internet, I am an old geezer. My first computer experience was with punch cards, and back then we didn't have any internets because we didn't have any massive, tangled-up tubes. So my tools are pretty old school...

Mabber Instant messaging how you want it, where you want it.
Zimbra Since a lot of poeple don't use Mabber yet.
Bloglines Since I never figured out get NetNewsWire to do what I want.
Flickr Picture sharing.
del.icio.us Link sharing.

Second Whiney Expat Bloggers in Germany Meet Up

2006-07-24T16:44:01+00:00

The Second Whiney Expat Bloggers in Germany Meet Up will take place in Bonn on 18 & 19 November 2006.

I'll try to be there, and I'll bring recordings of Christopher in a bad mood so I don't have to do any whining myself.

Scandinavian Park

2006-07-24T13:50:59+00:00

We took a trip up north to Denmark for the weekend, and I was most impressed by our stop Sunday morning at Scandinavian Park in Flensburg, a shopping center for Danes just inside Germany with a business plan based entirely on selling Danish beer at German prices. Prices are prominently displayed in Danish Kroner, and it's open late evenings and Sundays. Among other shops there's a cheap Etap hotel, a motorcycle supply shop, a slot-machine arcade, and a Beate Uhse sex shop. One stop shopping at its finest.

Of course if the EU ever equalized alcohol taxes the whole concept would be bankrupt in an instant.

Let's go exploring!

2006-07-24T07:10:10+00:00

Thanks to Andrea, we found that Amazon.de is offering The Complete Calvin and Hobbes for just EUR 63.89, less than half the list price. So we got one. At 10 kg, it's not light reading, but it's everything a Calvin and Hobbes fan could hope for (short of a rivival of the daily comic strip).

Calvin and Hobbes has (for now) replaced Harry Potter as Christopher's bedtime reading (with on-the-fly translation by Papa). Since he's Calvin's age, I think he sees the stories not so much as humor than as absolute truth.

Graduation Party

2006-07-21T13:26:02+00:00

Christopher's graduation party.

Sharp Objects in the Lawn

2006-07-21T05:41:31+00:00

One way to beat the heat is to get up early and get your outdoor tasks done before it gets too hot. You'll want to be careful if you're barefoot, though. You never know what you might step on.

Through the Window

2006-07-20T15:42:29+00:00

Today was Christopher last day of kindergarten. The tradition is that the "graduating" children jump through the window when they leave for the last time.

It's not time to say goodbye yet, there's still a party and picnic on the Elbe tomorrow.

Don't Keep Knocking

2006-07-19T04:44:22+00:00

At blogg.de we used to run a ping service using XML-RPC (similar to weblogs.com) for German (language or related) weblogs. We discontinued the service back in November. The data coming in was at least 99.9% garbage, either spam or from logs having nothing to do with German weblogs. The start page for blogg.de now lists entries only from blogg.de weblogs instead of the entire German blogosphere.

Now, 8 months later, we still receive over 60000 pings per hour, every hour. I recently set up mod_security to filter out the ping requests (with HTTP status "410 Gone") while letting through the (very, very) few legitimate requests from registered blogg.de users. The load on our web servers decreased by 30%.

The number of pings coming in hasn't decreased at all. After 10 days we're still at over 60000 per hour.

Poor Role Model

2006-07-18T19:39:30+00:00

When Christopher was born, his uncle gave him a framed print of Calvin and Hobbes for his bedroom.

This week Christopher discovered a book to go along with with his print.

I think he's just found a very poor role model. I suspect that was his uncle's plan all along.

And Action!

2006-07-17T18:14:25+00:00

</embed>

As promised, here's Christopher doing laps around the backyard. There's only one firey crash, at 0:22. We're still working on braking and coming to a safe stop.

Yes, the bike is too small for him. It's two years old, and he's, well, grown in the meantime.

Bravery and Balance

2006-07-16T19:50:42+00:00

I've got poor priorities for shooting video. Instead of taking silly videos of my wife, I should have been filming Christopher this afternoon as he was doing laps around the backyard on his bike, the first time without training wheels. He was pretty happy with himself. That he wasn't until now able to keep up with the neighbor kids in the bike-riding department was a sore point with him. We tried a couple of times last year, but he kept asking for the training wheels to go back on. Today he crashed a few times in the grass, but laughed at himself and kept going.

Another sign of his improved coordination and self-confidence came a few weeks ago, when he insisted we take him swimming so he could show us what he could do in the deep water. He's never wanted to even get his head wet before, but now he's going in water over his head with inflatable water wings on his arms (is that really what Schwimmflügel are called in English?) and doing cannonballs.

We really have to thank his kindergarten for this. They go swimming in groups of 3 every few weeks, and I also know they've been having Christopher practice with a walking bike outside. He's also been doing an hour of therapeutic tumbling every week, paid for by health insurance. Now after two years, he just four days left. Then, after summer vacation, he starts public school. I'm sure bravery and balance will come in handy there.

We'll do some more bike laps tomorrow afternoon, I'll try to remember to bring the camera.

Firestarter

2006-07-15T19:34:20+00:00

</embed>

Things are going better for us at home. MamaMaus is able to start the fire now, and I expect that by tomorrow she'll be able to fetch water from the creek.

Cheap Sunglasses

2006-07-14T18:19:58+00:00

Sonnenbrille Fielmann.

Half a Man

2006-07-14T16:30:13+00:00

At the beginning of the month I reduced my hours at nu2m to half-time, in preparation for the beginning of Christopher's school career in September (when he'll come home at noon on weekdays instead of 3 pm). I thought that by reducing hours before I needed to that I'd have a few weeks of relative peace and quiet. It hasn't turned out that way. All the personal and family things that need to be done have expanded to fill my free time.

One reason has been MamaMaus' injured foot. Her role in the household has been reduced to those items that don't involve walking, driving, picking things up, or climbing stairs. That doesn't leave a whole lot. The good news is that's she's off her crutches as of today, since the orthopedist asked her "What, you're not walking on it yet?" at her appointment this morning. She took that as a challenge. (And, yes, she's been back at work for over a week. She's been hitching rides with colleagues to get to the office.)

Christopher's day of Kindergarten is Thursday, when all the school-goers jump (or are thrown) out the window. They have their Summerfest on Friday, then he has vacation until September 2, with a 2-week trip to Minnesota at the beginning of August.

Yo Momma!

2006-07-11T18:35:41+00:00

Anil Dash: Zidane World Cup Headbutt Animation Festival

World Cup Ratings

2006-07-11T13:56:39+00:00

About 16.9 million viewers watched the World Cup final in the US, 2/3 in English on ABC, 1/3 in Spanish on Univision. That's roughly the same number who watch the NCAA men's basketball final or the World Series. That's also roughly the same number of viewers who watched the final in Great Britain.

And for all those folks complaining about the American announcers, you don't know how good you have it. I had to watch 90% of the games in 1986 and 1990 in Spanish. I'm sure I heard the name "Diego" uttered at least ten thousand times. And you don't have to listen to Reinhold Beckmann either.

Fanfest

2006-07-10T20:26:34+00:00

On Sunday Christopher and I left MamaMaus with her injured foot at home to check out the last day of the World Cup FanFest in Hamburg. In his Italia shirt he fit right in.

First he had to try out the trampoline.

Flying at the Heiligengeistfeld. (Update: I just realized that's my old office building in the background. Netlife RIP. The color is washed out because the sky was really dark, and I had to lighten up the picture to show Christopher's smile.)

It started to rain, so we went inside to the foosball tables.

When the weather cleared, we tried out the life-sized version.

Hillary Clinton and Fargo

2006-07-06T06:41:29+00:00

Well, theres room in my village for a wood chipper. (Helen Thomas via Anke Gröner)

Germany 0 Italy 2

2006-07-05T21:38:39+00:00

I've been meaning to post something more on last night's game, but instead I'll point to a couple of tech bloggers who've written about it, namely Matthew Langham who explains how Germany won even though the team lost, and Tim Bray who says it was what soccer was meant to be.

My thought as it ended was the fastest 118 minutes of scoreless soccer I've ever watched, and that it was a game to remember for a couple of decades, since (due to tournament seedings) good teams face one another so seldom in in non-friendlies. The last time Germany and Italy met in a World Cup was the first Cup I closely watched (and rooted for Germany), the final in 1982.

Dip in the Seeve

2006-07-05T06:15:59+00:00

We have temperatures well over 32°C (90°F), so yesterday afternoon Christopher cooled off in the Seeve, the creek that runs near our house. It used to be a popular starting point for canoes, but the banks have eroded and the county has now banned all boats. They're currently building up the bank, so Christopher had to nearly crawl over a backhoe to get in the water

There's a slideshow here for grandparents and other Christopher fans.

Christopher Wins

2006-07-04T21:44:33+00:00

And he doesn't even know that his team won yet. He fell asleep at halftime.

Trick Ankle

2006-07-02T18:20:51+00:00

After running 5K in the Buchholzer Stadtlauf last year, MamaMaus has been looking forward to running 10K this year. The big race was today, her firm was a main sponsor and she started together with a dozen colleagues. The weather was warm, but a a breeze kept things from getting too hot.

Alas, she never finished. About 500m into the run she stepped on a plastic bottle that someone had dropped, her ankle gave way, and fell in agony to the ground. The medics took her away in an ambulance, and her race was over. She has torn ligaments in the same ankle as in 2003, and will be limping for 4 weeks. Good thing we didn't toss out the crutches.

And she'll miss the World Cup final in Berlin next weekend.

Italia

2006-07-02T16:45:16+00:00

Our son is an independent thinker.

Art Auction

2006-07-02T11:42:02+00:00

Yesterday was open house at Christopher's kindergarten. The theme was Color in Kindergarten, and they had numerous projects and games with colors and painting, including an auction of several paintings done by the kids.

The teachers had obviously dropped hints to the kids to get their parents to buy paintings. Christopher has been telling us for a week he wanted us to buy his group's painting. Since it's all for a good cause, we were ready to make our bid. The auction started at 1 Euro, and by the time we got up to 25 Euros the competition had been scared off.

"Anyone for 26? Going once, going twice..."

And this point Christopher shouted "Twenty-six!", taking the bid from his own mother much to the delight of the crowd and the auctioneer.

I'm sure there's a law about minors and valid contracts, but we weren't going to be fussy, and we paid the 26 Euros. We now have this wonderful masterpiece in our front hall, "The Puzzle".

Don't Get Naked

2006-07-01T07:01:46+00:00

Christopher is already excited about our upcoming trip to visit his Grandma and Grandpa in Minnesota. He's already planning on fishing from the dock, playing tricks on his Uncle Steve, roasting marshmallows, and getting presents from the Lego Store at Mall of America. He's also looking forward to swimming in the lake, but he has a concern.

"You can't be naked in America."

We assured him that applies only outside. As long as he goes inside to change into his swimsuit, he's OK.

Toys

2006-06-28T19:05:43+00:00

The white one is mine, the black one is MamaMaus'. Christopher went empty today.

For all the complaining I did, the MacBook arrived on the exact day Apple estimated delivery. It doesn't whine, it doesn't moo, and it's not too hot.

MamaMaus' employer is rolling out Blackberries throughout Europe. She's been used to replicating Lotus Notes on her notebook. Her first comment: "This is easy. You mean I don't have to sync it?"

Holiday on Ice

2006-06-26T10:18:12+00:00

Spreeblick asks if the World Cup fiasco last night between Portugal and Holland was perhaps ice hockey instead of a soccer match.

I doubt it. I've never seen an ice hockey game as dirty as that, or with such poor officiating.

Web Design Explained

2006-06-23T16:31:50+00:00

This pie chart explains in terms even a pointy-haired manager can understand why web design takes so much longer than is planned. It also explains why the designers are sometimes so surly to the sys admins. (via 2020 Hindsight)

Wave If You See Us

2006-06-22T07:02:00+00:00

This afternoon at 4 pm we'll be at the Czech Republic - Italy match in Hamburg, this time with real tickets, no FIFA buffet but with Christopher. We're lucky that both teams have something to gain, so we won't have a yawner like Argentina - Holland last night.

We'll be sitting in the "north curve" just behind the right post of the right-hand goal (if you're watching on TV). Christopher might be holding up his American flag. Wave if you see us.

Update: We're back. Italy won and we had a good look at the second goal on our end. Here are a couple of pictures

MacBook Shanghaied

2006-06-21T20:02:51+00:00

My MacBook, ordered on 31 May from the German Apple Store, hasn't been delivered yet. But thanks to the Apple Tracking site at apecode, where one can track European Apple Store orders, I know my MacBook is out of the factory and waiting for a flight out of Shanghai. Expected delivery date: 29 June.

Four weeks from order to delivery? Next time I think I'll try a local dealer.

VIP for a day at the World Cup

2006-06-20T12:32:41+00:00

Sometimes good things do come to those who wait. Last week MamaMaus was offered comp VIP tickets for the World Cup match Saudi Arabia - Ukraine in Hamburg. We got free food and drink, the weather was comfortable (after a thunderstorm cooled things off just before kick-off), there were a lot of goals, and we had a good time.

The seats were good too, just behind the Ukraine bench. We were in the same row as Uwe Seeler, and we could see FIFA President Blatter a few rows below.

Priceless, as in no price listed, and may not be sold.

Football with champagne and hors d'oeuvres. And Budweiser. There were several levels of VIP as far as I could tell. We were at 2nd or 3rd level.

MamaMaus likes the kids as player escorts.

The two team buses, and the FIFA fleet of Hyundais in the background.

Heroes and Villains

2006-06-16T07:19:32+00:00

The thing that's so cool about the World Cup, and soccer in general, is that it's so blatantly emotional and subjective.

Take the past couple of days. There have been 3 games (Germany - Poland, England - Trinidad and Tobago, Sweden - Paraguay) where the plot line has been basically the same. The favorite struggles to score against a defensive underdog and can only win by scoring very late.

In the first, the heroes were persistent and courageous, and the result was a just reward for tenaciousness and hard work.

In the second, the villains were confused and inept, and the result was simply a great stroke of luck.

The third was so boring that I switched it off.

USA - Czech Republic

2006-06-12T17:26:35+00:00

So, the real World Cup started at 6 pm today, but the USA is being outclassed by the Czech Republic. The US can control the ball, but it looks like they've made the mistake of bringing stiletto knives to an axe fight. They're trailing 2:0 at halftime. At least they've mastered the offside trap, which the Germans still need to work on.

Germans have this thing about complicated football (er, soccer) pools, so you can see how badly I've predicted at Blogtipp. I did pick the Czech Republic to win the Cup, based on two simulations I read about. One was a video game, the other a beer competition in Stern. Good enough for me.

The best Internet live commentary, by the way, is at the Guardian. Update: and not just because they quote my emails (scroll down to 83 minutes).

Conclusion: 3:0. This has been a Cup without blowouts, until now. The US was energetic, but unimaginative. How did the US ever earn the 5th place FIFA ranking? In March against Germany, and again today, we've been outclassed.

From the World Cup Front

2006-06-07T22:40:17+00:00

MamaMaus reports from Munich. She's at a 2 star hotel with 5 star World Cup rates this week for business meetings before the World Cup opener on Friday. The hotel was apparently was last redecorated for the previous big sports event in Munich, the 1972 Olympics. Her meeting for Thursday was cancelled, she booked a flight home so she can sleep in her own bed one night before returning for the opening match and the hotel lost in the '70s Friday night. She may have VIP tickets, but her hotel is lost in the twilight zone.

Never Talk to Tele2

2006-06-06T07:39:10+00:00

A couple of weeks ago I got a sale call from Tele2 offering some sort of pre-select phone package for local and long-distance calls. I politely said I wasn't interested and hung up. I never buy anything on the phone.

The telemarketer from Tele2 apparently disagreed, and submitted an order in my name anyway. A letter arrived a week later thanking me for my registration. I immediately faxed a cancelation to Tele2 Customer Service.

The cancelation was ignored. This weekend T-Com informed me that all calls from our line would be routed through Tele2. I called T-Com this morning, and they seemed to be familiar with the scam. When I mentioned I was calling about a pre-select change, the rep replied "You don't want it, right?". He assured me that the routing change would be ignored.

I'm not sure what advice I should give. I would never do business with Tele2, but even if you don't talk them, you might end up doing business with them anyway.

Stormy Weather

2006-06-05T17:36:59+00:00

We just returned from camping. The weather was perfect: mostly sunny, slightly breezy, dry, and warm enough for short sleeves.

Unfortunately, it was only perfect for one hour as we were packing to leave. Otherwise, the weather was mostly miserable. Rain on Saturday, wind on Sunday, and mostly cold for June (low was 5°C this morning).

We made do the best we could. Here's the crew huddled in one of the tents.

On Sunday we visited the Erlebnisbahnof Schmilau, an old railway station converted into a living musueum. We didn't feel up to a 2-hour trip with a handcar, but we did rent a 6teambike, a bicycle built for six, for an hour-long round trip.

MB 13/1.83 CTO WHITE

2006-06-02T06:18:35+00:00

MB 13/1.83 CTO WHITE is the secret code for "I've ordered myself a present", namely a new MacBook, with 0% financing so the Finance Minister won't notice.

The battery on my 500 MHz PowerBook no longer charge, so it was time to do something. I work mostly at the kitchen table, but it's handy to sometimes work elsewhere. With no USB 2.0, Bluetooth, high-speed WiFi, or ethernet (broken), the PowerBook is not so practical anymore. Normally I wouldn't consider a new first-generation product, but the specs, the timing, and the price are all right. I don't need to burn DVDs, nor do I need a lot of disk space. The CPU will probably run hot, but it can double as a foot warmer in winter. The screen is small, but I can plug in a monitor when I'm in the kitchen. I don't do games, so slow graphics don't matter.

I imagine that when school starts I'll be spending many afternoons as Christopher's taxi driver, so it will be good to have something portable to work with when I'm waiting for my next fare.

Camping

2006-06-02T04:36:44+00:00

We're taking Christopher for his first camping trip this weekend. We're heading to Ratzeburg and meeting up with his uncles and cousins for the Pentecost (or is it Whitsun) holiday weekend.

We haven't been camping for a few years, so we've been hectically gathering supplies and wondering what we're missing. I'm sure we'll realize we've forgotten something essential once we are there. That's part of of the fun, and it's not like we're in the wilderness. The shops are open all day Saturday.

Just to complicate matters, MamaMaus comes home late from a business meeting tonight, so Christopher and I are packing everything into the Lupo this afternoon, and Mama will be joining us tomorrow in the A8 (did I mention she's now driving Audi after over a decade of BMW?).

Christopher is very excited. We're just hoping the weather will turn relatively dry.

Ancient Documents

2006-05-27T19:43:10+00:00

We were digging through ancient artifacts to find this article by MamaMaus from her student newspaper, written as an exchange student in spring 1980. It gives her impression of the American school system. No carbon dating is necessary due to the reference to Ronald Reagan as "likely Republican candidate". Click to enlarge.

Ancient History

2006-05-27T19:20:54+00:00

MamaMaus dug out some old photos for a presentation she's giving at her old Gymnasium (high school). Here's how she looked when I fell in love with her.

I still get that smile sometimes. Also note the original Macintosh computer at the lower left.

A political statement. Both photos must be in our first apartment in 1983.

This is me, January 1981 in Minnesota. Almost no-shirt weather.

Harry Potter and the Development of Christopher

2006-05-19T20:37:19+00:00

A couple of months ago we started reading Harry Potter to Christopher, evenings before he goes to sleep, usually a chapter or somewhat less per night. We've just finished Chamber of Secrets (the 2nd book). He's very excited about it. Sometimes he puts on a tie and a cape and goes around with a magic wand putting spells on things and people. He's also drawn some elaborate scenes from the books in Kindergarten.

So, is Harry Potter appropriate for a six-year-old?

The teachers and child care professionals we've told about it have had no misgivings, but most of the parents we've mentioned it to have questioned our judgement. Most of the parents, though, hadn't read the books, but had seen scenes from the movies.

Christopher has seen ads for the movies on TV, and that's how he knew about Harry Potter in the first place. The movies are inappropriate for his age, of course, but we let him watch the DVDs only with our supervision and only for the scenes we have already read in the books. He's adept with the remote control, and accepts our restriction. "Do you know where we stopped reading? Do I have to rewind now?"

We also trust that he's beyond the age for confusing fantasy and reality. "I'm just playing", he says when he puts "spells" on us. "There's no such thing as magic anymore." He's been playing with Lego Bionicles for nearly a year, they also have a storyline of good versus evil. Good always wins, but evil never dies.

Christopher comprehends an amazing amount from the books. We have to the chance when reading to make sure he understands. He always has questions, but almost always about what is about to happen next. "We just have to keep reading." He doesn't understand everything, but the bit about Voldemort living without physical body is a tough concept for anyone.

We find that Harry Potter is an ideal hero for a young stutterer about to start school. Harry is different from everyone else, he's misunderstood, and he's someone special. He cannot control how others react to him, he can only deal with it the best he can, and do what's best for himself.

23 mph

2006-05-17T20:06:12+00:00

Orangemedia, our partner firm in Hamburg, recently moved to the Stresemannstrasse. Not only do they have no parking spots, but it is near one of the most famous radar cameras in the city. Of course on my first visit to the new office I got nabbed on the way home, doing 37 km/h in the 30 km/zone. So I get to contribute €15 to the Stresemannstrasse traffic reduction project, aka Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg Bußgeldstelle.

I'm sure most Americans would find it funny to get a speeding ticket for 23 mph.

Update Let me add some background. The Stresemannstrasse is notorious as a narrow high traffic street in a residential area. Unfortunately it's the most direct route from downtown to the A7. In the '90s there were at least two kids killed by speeding trucks running red lights. After that it was made one lane with 30 km/h, but after von Beust took office it was restored to two lanes against the wishes of the residents.

Doc Test

2006-05-17T07:41:16+00:00

I just got an Email with some blurb for a conference on IT security. Attached was a Word document with a map to the conference location.

I'm assuming this is some sort of pre-test for admission. If I'm dumb enough to open the document, I'm not eligible to attend, right?

World Cup

2006-05-16T07:03:12+00:00

Seeing how Haddock got tickets for a World Cup match after all reminded me that I haven't yet mentioned our World Cup plans.

MamaMaus' employer is a major sponsor so she has to work throughout the tournament. Her company is present in the stadiums, so to supervise that presence she has a service pass (but no seat) for all matches in Hamburg. She'll officially attend at least 3 matches, the opening match in Munich, a final round match in Hannover, and the final in Berlin. These are all business events, so no family members invited. For the match in Munich, her boss thoughtfully scheduled a couple of days of business meetings at the home office that week to make sure his people would be there.

She did have the opportunity to order tickets (at full price) for us through an internal lottery at the company. This was after the pairings were announced, so we picked the most attractive match in Hamburg, Italy-Czech Republic on June 22 in the final match for Group E. This is the US group, so hopefully they both will have lost to the Americans and will be fighting for second place :-). Alas, MamaMaus has a business trip that day, so Christopher and I will be attending alone.

Christopher is actually looking forward to it, which is surprising since he had absolutely no interest in coming along to HSV last fall. But he still thinks baseball is better than soccer, so he's looking more forward to watching baseball in the big stadium with his grandparents later this summer.

Why I Blog

2006-05-14T15:44:18+00:00

Why Don Park blogs:

I don't blog to be recognized, get credit for being first of whatever, nor to amuse anyone. I am too much of a bastard for that. This blog is here to satisfy my own needs and no one else's. I tend to give a shit too much so I am trying hard to be selfish in the sense 'I don't give a hoot if other folks in this elevator called Earth suffocates if I fart right here and right now.'

Makes sense to me.

Baseball in Hamburg

2006-05-13T13:51:45+00:00

Since MamaMaus is on a cruise ship somewhere between Venice and Dubrovnik this weekend (believe it or not, it's part of her job), Christopher and I decided to take in a baseball game in Hamburg, HSV Stealers against the Bonn Capitals.

We've watched baseball before in Germany, namely The Dohren Wild Farmers, a 2nd Bundesliga team, but there we were the only ones in the audience not related to a member of the team. Hamburg is in the first Bundesliga and there is a world of difference. I actually had to pay for admission (Christopher was free), and there were at least 3 dozen spectators in attendance.

We only made it through 7 innings of one game of a double-header. That took 2-1/2 hours, and the home team was losing 14-3. Near the end we started taking each other's picture.

iFit

2006-05-12T17:51:50+00:00

This is as cool as anything from Apple: shoes that grow with your kids!

Built right into INCHworm shoes is the iFit technology. The iFit technology allows you to GROW the size of the shoe with a simple push of the button. So eliminate unnecessary trips to the shoe store and provide your children with better fitting shoes that last up to three sizes longer. Inchworm shoes grow in half size increments. Just push the button on the side, and pull the toe of the shoe to adjust into the next size.

Or is this a sign I've been home with Christopher too long? (via Parent Hacks)

Waiting For Godot

2006-05-12T14:57:31+00:00

Back in the '80s marrying foreigners was a lot easier. Philadelphia Daily News: How law divided a family:

As soon as Emery and Paola were married (in November 2002), her visitor's visa was no longer valid. 'Marriage invalidates a student or visitor's visa,' Emery said. 'So, if your application for permanent residency is delayed, you're in the worst kind of limbo.' Paola was advised not to leave the country until her permanent residency came through, or she might not be permitted to return. But the process that was supposed to take months dragged on for three years with no end in sight.

Early this year, the couple sued the director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees citizenship and immigration services, in federal court, and won. Finally, they have their lives back.

The legal bill was $4,435. The human cost was much higher.

We didn't have to wait for the Green Card, but it did take the INS 4 tries to spell her name right. (via Wonkette)

You Learn Something Everyday

2006-05-09T23:12:38+00:00

Dixie Peach: Newfound Joy:

Most Americans, unless they have family or friends who live in or travel to Europe or Canada, have never heard of Kinder Surprise Eggs but when they are finally introduced to them they inevitably ask 'Why don't they sell them in the US?'. The short answer is because the FDA prohibits the sale of something inedible completely incased in something edible.</p>

Acutally, I've never wondered about that. But click through to Dixie Peach, maybe Ferrero has found a way around the FDA...

Pulled Over

2006-05-08T06:12:16+00:00

Girls: Hip hugging jeans, short sweaters (I think the Germans would call these pullovers, although they weren't pulled over completely)...</p>

Der Auslander explaining how the German word "pullover" isn't that far off the mark after all, along with the futiliy of trying to drinking Russians under the table, even when they are female and underweight.

Captain of the Mir

2006-05-06T14:28:05+00:00

We took advantage of the sunny afternoon to visit the Hafengeburtstag in Hamburg yesterday. Christopher was mostly interested in the carnival rides and the junk food, but I was able to talk him into going aboard the Russian sailing ship Mir.

Web 2.1 server-side blink tag

2006-05-04T19:08:55+00:00

Now here's something to make my boss salivate... a standards-compliant Web 2.1 server-side blink tag, done with AJAX! (via dashes.com)

Northwest pilots agree wage cuts

2006-05-04T18:10:35+00:00

BBC NEWS: Northwest pilots agree wage cuts: "Northwest Airlines' pilots have voted to accept a contract that will cut their pay by 24%, a move the firm said is key to it emerging from bankruptcy." Which is good, since we've got non-refundable tickets to fly Northwest to Minnesota in August (although we actually bought the tickets from KLM, which is not bankrupt).

(And is it just British English, or is the BBC cutting back on prepositions in its headlines?)

No Denglish

2006-05-04T12:15:13+00:00

ChicagoKarl notes the prevelence of English jargon in the German language, especially in IT. I think German would be a lot easier without any English words, because

I don't which article to use with them
I don't konw how to pronounce them (correct English or phonetic German)
They don't always mean what you think they mean (i.e. "handy" doesn't mean adept, and "pullover" has nothing to do with the wool over your eyes)

I don't worry about it much though. I haven't had any angst of foreign languages since I had a blitz course in French back in kindergarten.

Bad Day Fishing

2006-05-03T16:15:57+00:00

There's a saying that a good day at work is never as good as a bad day fishing. But since a sys admin's favorite task is deleting files, a day when I can reduce a file server from 134 GB to 90 GB is nearly as good as a bad day fishing.

Political Wisdom

2006-05-02T12:47:23+00:00

More political wisdom from Scott Adams:

Personally, I don't vote. That's partly because I know there isn't enough information available for me to make an informed decision, and partly because the rich white guys in power (my peeps) are doing a good job of taking from the poor and giving to me. I don't have much to gripe about.

That's particularly timely given all the obituaries for John Kenneth Galbraith yesterday.

Kraut Eye for the Ami Guy

2006-04-30T17:37:22+00:00

I don't have any eye for fashion, so it came as a surprise to read in expat blogs that a distinguishing characteristic of Americans in Europe are white tennis shoes.

However, until last year, all the tennis shoes I've bought since moving to Germany have been white. And all were bought while on trips to the US, I guess because unconsciously I couldn't find any shoes here I liked.

A couple days ago, just before leaving for Orlando, Mama tossed my last white tennis shoes in the trash. Not because they were white, but because (she claims) they were worn out. So now my tennis shoes are blue.

And now for something completely different. I need to find a new secret name for my wife. "Mama" doesn't seem to cut it... it certainly describes Christopher's relationship to her, but not mine. "Voldemort" (she who must not be named) is too sinister. "Maus", her real nickname, is too cute (and is already taken). She often uses a variation of "Maus" that refers to her employer, but mentioning her employer here is taboo. Claire calls her spouse "The German". Could I call mine "The Gerwoman"?

Google Blurry Maps

2006-04-27T16:45:45+00:00

Lots of people are pointing out that Google Maps has new maps and pictures for Germany, but at least where we live things are still pretty blurry. But we have some roads and towns now, anyway.

American Round Table

2006-04-27T05:27:50+00:00

Our favorite local restaurant California 101 (Neue Strasse 12 in Buchholz) has a American "Stammtisch" the last Thursday of every month for expats, folks who have visited the States, and anyone else who wants to come and speak a little English.

The past few months we've had always been busy on Round Table nights, but this evening we're free and we'll both be there. Mama has to go to Orlando next week, so she can start getting in the mood ~~for outlet store shopping~~.

The food (American and Baja Mexican) and the service are great, there's a toy corner for kids, and we usually eat there 3 or 4 times a month. Christina's too busy to finish her website though.

Jutta Allmendinger

2006-04-25T19:37:45+00:00

Since I'm collecting examples of prominent working mothers, I'll mention Prof. Jutta Allmendinger, Director of the Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (Institute for Labor Market and Employment Research). I heard her on the radio a month or so ago. She explained how during her studies in the States it was natural for female students and professors to continue their work soon after having children, so she did the same. I was reminded of her since she was a co-author of the Family Report issued by Ursula von der Leyen's Family Ministry today.

The working mother in our household had heard of her as well. Prof. Allmendinger spoke at a European day care congress in March at which my wife was part of a panel.

Postcard

2006-04-25T06:26:48+00:00

We parents are supposed to send a postcard to our kids at their Freetime camp. I found this happy pig. I hope Christopher enjoys it.

Don't Worry, Spend Money

2006-04-24T20:01:17+00:00

We just got a funny letter from our county's Katasteramt, a word that at first glance looks like catheter but actually mean land-registry office. They just noticed that we built a carport that doesn't appear in their official plans, and could we please hire a surveyor to measure it (at our cost, of course), otherwise they would take the trouble to hire one for us (at our cost, of course). They didn't say which course of action would be more expensive. The funny part is that the carport has been up for over 8 years, so I guess they don't check their plans all that often. The other funny part is they sent us a photocopy of the survey of our street with all their notes, so we now know none of our neighbors bothered to hire a surveyor for their new buildings either.

This will hopefully be the last unexpected cost of building our house (finished in December 1995). That's the bad news when building here, there are tons of unexpected costs that noone tells you about or you don't think about beforehand, up to 20% of the total price if you start adding it all up. The good news is that after the first couple of shocks, you stop thinking about it and don't care anymore. While we were building we no longer talked about money, we talked about units, back then each unit was 1000 DM. Everytime something came up for which we hadn't budgeted, we just laughed, counted how many units it would cost and added the bill to the pile.

We didn't have any cash left because, as we learned immediately after signing the mortgage, the bank takes your money first. When you agree to put up 20% of the cost of building, financing 80%, the bank expects you to spend your 20% before they pay out a single penny. And the first bill comes right away when you sign the contract, namely the real estate transfer tax (Grunderwerbsteuer).

Don't worry, spend money, be happy. Your budget will recover about a year after you move in.

CEO Compensation

2006-04-24T14:06:04+00:00

James A Skinner, CEO Of McDonald's, earned $4.2 mil in total compensation in 2005, ranking 295 among the CEOs of America's 500 biggest companies.

Freetime 2.0

2006-04-23T19:19:17+00:00

Christopher is all set for a week of freetime, like he did last year with his Kindergarten group, ages 4 to 6. They'll again be at St. Peter Ording on the North Sea for 4 nights away from their parents. Since he's done this before, he's not apprehensive about it at all, and is almost looking forward to it.

A trip like this is not a normal part of German kindergarten, but Christopher does not attend a normal kindergarten. Lisa at An American in Aachen has posted about her son's poor experience with German special education in "Kids who fall through the (canyon-sized) cracks...". Our experience has been extremely positive, although there are some major differences in our situation. For one thing we are dealing with a charity-run kindergarten and not a public school. It's run by the local chapter of Lebenshilfe, a very fine organization that primarily helps the "intellectually disabled" and their families. For another, we live in a fairly well-off suburban/rural county with more resources to devote to education than a typical city. And finally, Christopher was offered specific therapy for his speech problems, and in fact the state of Lower Saxony has made a priority of pre-school speech. Lisa's son suffers from dyslexia, and it sounds like Aachen has nothing specific to offer him other than the Sonderschule.

But now our adventure with the German school system is about to begin. As I mentioned before, our local Sonderschule has determined that Christopher belongs in a regular school. Everything we have heard about our local elementary school has been very good, and our initial contacts have been positive, and they seem to be willing to work with us and with Christopher. We'll find out soon enough. Einschuling, the celebration of the first day of school, is on 2 September.

How She Does It

2006-04-23T17:54:30+00:00

Another working mother story, this time on Sophie Vandebroek, CTO of Xerox, whose husband died 10 years ago leaving her with three children.

How does she do it? By sticking to strict rules for travel, refusing relocations, and living simply. She hires someone to do laundry and grocery shopping, and doesn't sweat it if things don't go perfectly. "So many things we worry about," she says, "are not important." She keeps the family schedule uncluttered--only one sport or activity per kid per season--and chooses simple weekend activities and vacations, as well. She even keeps her hair short to make the morning routine quicker.

At work, she instructs her assistant not to plan any meetings before 9 am or after 5:30 pm. When traveling, she avoids scheduling meetings before 10 am, so she can fly in and out the same day.

And she always has accepted new jobs, no matter what crisis was unfolding at home. "The more senior jobs you get, the easier it is," she says. "You get less control over how busy you are, but you get more over decisions about when you're busy and how you're going to do things."

That's the secret, just keep getting promoted until you control your own schedule.

I Bake Cookies, Too

2006-04-23T12:06:39+00:00

The New York Times has a profile of Ursula von der Leyen, German Family Minister and the most colorful and controversial member of Angela Merkel's mostly colorless cabinet. I didn't realize she had worked in the US, which explains how she picked up her decidedly un-German ideas on working mothers. The article doesn't mention her father (long-time Lower Saxony Premier Ernst Albrecht). Her maiden name was her head start in the CDU, but she's now gone too far for it to be of any advantage to her now.

Google's China Problem

2006-04-22T19:23:46+00:00

An interesting and long article in the New York Times on Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem), which asks whether some forms of censorship and collaboration and less evil than others, and ends with the proposition that the biggest influence for democracy in China may be "American Idol".

By the way, Google did notice that I removed my AdSense ads. They sent me an automated email with tips for increasing my revenue. I have the feeling though that boycotting (even a small part of) Google is like boycotting oxygen. You turn blue in the face and everyone else keeps on breathing anyway.

New Phone

2006-04-21T19:10:36+00:00

Don't mind me, I'm just trying out the new cameraphone.

Nothing Healthy on the Dollar Menu

2006-04-20T19:33:15+00:00

Kottke says: "Because of their Dollar Menu (which doesn't feature any of their recently added healthy menu items), sales at McDonald's have risen sharply over the last three years. In Germany you can get a side salad on the "1x1 Menu". Do the American Dollar Menu ads really target young low-income ethnics?

Math Teacher Arrested

2006-04-20T18:34:47+00:00

Another victory in the war on terror: US Detains Al-Gebra Operative (as seen at Spreeblick).

At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math's instruction.

“Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,” Gonzales said. “They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'.”

Job Description

2006-04-20T16:21:30+00:00

I hadn't realized that Nico had entered my job description in Basecamp.

Hello, Langley!

2006-04-20T04:51:21+00:00

Just when you thought that noone was reading your weblog, it turns that no, you're wrong. Thanks to Wonkette, we now know that someone is:

President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said. The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.

"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to ... people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else," Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.

Eliot A. Jardines, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source, said the amount of unclassified intelligence reaching Mr. Bush and senior policy-makers has increased as a result of the center's creation in November. "We're certainly scoring a number of wins with our ultimate customer," said Mr. Jardines, who became the first high-level official in charge of the government's nonsecret intelligence in December.

"I can't get into detail of what, but I'll just say the amount of open source reporting that goes into the president's daily brief has gone up rather significantly," Mr. Jardines said. "There has been a real interest at the highest levels of our government, and we've been able to consistently deliver products that are on par with the rest of the intelligence community."

A million monkeys banging on keyboards deliver intelligence "on par with the rest of the intelligence community"? That explains a lot.

Is there still a God?

2006-04-19T18:24:13+00:00

"Is there still a God?"

"Why is he in heaven?"

"Who are his customers?"

"Are the angels his customers?"

"What services does God perform?"

Where does Christopher come up with questions like this? Is he being a philosopher or a business analyst? (He really used the words "Kunden" and "Leistungen".) At least his final statement on religion ("In heaven it gets dark on time.") seemed more appropriate for his age.

Too Many Adjectives

2006-04-19T08:35:50+00:00

If you've been in Germany too long, sometimes you forget to notice the problems that the mainstream German press has reporting about race. raskal trippin noted the reporting on a racist beating in Potsdam.

from the 4 sentence description on the news in Brandenburg (Berliner Zeitung):
"schwarze Deutscher"/ black German
"fremdenfeinlichen Hintergrund" /xenophobic background
"gebürtige Äethopier" /Ethopian-born

As she says, the story should simply read "Ernyas M., a 37-year-old man from Potsdam, was attacked in a racially motivated hate crime". Everything else is irrelevant.

Steal Your Own Paper

2006-04-18T15:21:19+00:00

Back in college I had the perfect part-time job: union scale for no work. I worked the weekend graveyard shift in the radio room of the StarTribune newspaper, monitoring police and fire radio. My job was to keep a log and to wake a photographer in case something particularly gruesome occurred (like 6 kids dying in a house fire, that made the front page).

One of the perks was being able to read the final edition of the next morning's paper as it literally rolled off the presses. No more, I guess. Jeff Jarvis mentions that the StarTribune no longer provides free newspapers to its newsroom, instead setting up vending boxes throughout the office. However, the revenue was somewhat less than expected. The circulation manager sent a memo:

During the first week that the additional on-site racks were in service, 43 percent of the Star Tribunes removed from those racks were not paid for. For the second week the rate was 41 percent. This is called ‘pilferage’ in our business; but put more plainly, it is theft, pure and simple.

As an aside, the newsroom was the dirtiest and grimiest workplace where I've ever worked, nothing at all like the bright and shiny newsroom they showed on Lou Grant. And I never did figure out why our desk contained sheets and sheets of printed address labels for the law office of former Vice-President Walter Mondale.

First Slide: I Think We Need To Talk

2006-04-18T05:57:05+00:00

My Hypertextual Life » The Many Uses of Power Point: bullet points for your break-up (via Accordion Guy)

Easter Monday

2006-04-17T16:09:33+00:00

Easter Monday is one of those holidays we've never gotten into. We usually end up doing some sort of home improvement project like painting or wallpapering. Today we sorted out outdated toys, a big chore since Christopher seems to have inherited my sense of organizations (stack and pile). Our Tagesmutter will be happy for the pile of outsorted toys.

It'd be great to be able to sit in the garden, but the weather is a month behind schedule and we've got standing water on the lawn. No walking on the grass without rubber boots.

Christopher was home sick all last week, by Friday we were both tired of being stuck home together. He was healthy enough for the Easter fire Saturday night, but we didn't stay long. Yesterday we searched for Easter eggs in the mud and took Oma out for Easter dinner.

Do Mention The War

2006-04-14T19:39:43+00:00

World cup seen as chance to recognise Nazi past, which I guess means it's now OK for John Cleese to mention the war, and for English fans to sing "Ten German Bombers". (via anglofritz)

Open Mabber

2006-04-12T04:26:03+00:00

Since the Number 1 question I get lately is whether I have any Mabber invitations, it's good news that as of now registration for Mabber is open. Come crash the instant messaging party, no invitation is needed.

In the spirit of dogfood I've been using Mabber daily since we starting testing. Not only does it work well, but if you add a little water it makes a very tasty gravy.

I'm trying to think...

2006-04-11T20:03:24+00:00

My current attitude about blogging is best summed up by UserLand Shortcut No. 22: (for those of you who remember or maybe even still use Frontier): entitled "curly". Click to listen.

Congratulations

2006-04-04T08:49:56+00:00

My boss will be preoccupied for a while... Henri Carl Mattis was born early this morning. Congratulations to Nico, Sibylle und Rike!

Weekend in Stralsund

2006-04-02T19:42:55+00:00

We spent the weekend in Stralsund, at the Hansedom, a spa and wellness park with adjoining hotel. The weekend was a my birthday present from my family, including a fitness test defining in numbers exactly how unfit I am. Christopher enjoyed the water park with 3 slides so much that we went twice. We were very happy with the hotel (price includes the water park and fitness center), and now that the Autobahn A20 is complete we can reach Stralsund in just 2 hours.

We spent the evening in the old city and harbor, admiring the view of the half-finished and controversial Rügenbrücke, which we were sure my father, the retired highway engineer, would have very much enjoyed. Before heading home today we crossed over to Rügen and checked out the resort town of Binz just long enough to buy and ice cream, take a quick walk on the beach, and be able to claim that we've been there.

And the weather was even mostly pleasant, unlike what we had been warned. It was a good weekend.

School 2.0

2006-04-01T05:08:45+00:00

Last week Christopher attended a local school for 3 days to evaluate his fitness to start first grade in the fall in light of his stuttering problem. Officially we had applied for the "determinination of special educational need", but actually we wanted a detailed evaulation with an official rejection. Yesterday we a conference with the evaluator, and that's exactly what we got.

Academically he'll have no problems at all. He breezed through all the "homework" he was given, and by the second day was already bored. Psychologically we were told that he is self-confident, charming and somewaht extroverted, and that he talks constantly. None of this was news to us. In short, he has all the prerequisites to do well in a regular elementary school in spite of his stutter.

We'll arrange a meeting this spring with his future teacher to explain Christopher's situation, but it looks like everything will be set when school starts on 2 September.

Where Am I? Who Am I?

2006-03-25T20:44:43+00:00

I've been pretty quiet here the past week. Mama was gone 5 days, including last weekend, Christopher had short days for school testing and a home day on Friday, and I've been up to my ears in work. (I installed a new mail server, but the old server died before the all the users were migrated. And that was just one of several problems.)

But things are looking up. Spring is here, the snow is almost gone. Mama has a business-trip-free April. And the three of us are splitting next weekend to Stralsund. I'm sure that clear thinking will resume shortly.

Poor Sun

2006-03-20T19:46:17+00:00

Poor Sun. They can't sell their servers and they can't give them away.

Robber Hotzenplotz

2006-03-19T19:10:33+00:00

Christopher and I went to see the new film The Robber Hotzenplotz today, and now he has a new role model.

A Better System

2006-03-16T07:07:39+00:00

When you are a cartoonist you learn to be concise, and in the The Dilbert Blog Scott Adams summed my university education in economics and politics in just 3 sentences:

I still favor the traditional system where rich people run the country and convince the morons who live here that the voters are really the ones in charge. It's not a perfect system, but no one has come up with a better one. And it's fair in the sense that anyone could become rich and abuse the poor.

I don't think he's being funny or sarcastic.

Messenger Prank

2006-03-15T06:41:38+00:00

I've won new respect for the University of California Berkeley after reading about the Basketball Prank at Cal:

Victoria was a hoax UCLA co-ed, created by Cal's Rally Committee. For the previous week, "she" had been chatting with Gabe Pruitt, USC's starting guard, over AOL Instant Messenger. It got serious. Pruitt and several of his teammates made plans to go to Westwood after the game so that they could party with Victoria and her friends.

On Saturday, at the game, when Pruitt was introduced in the starting lineup, the chants began: "Victoria, Victoria." One of the fans held up a sign with her phone number.

The look on Pruitt's face when he turned to the bench after the first Victoria chant was priceless.

My boss went to Cal, I could imagine him participating in something like this.

Previews of Coming Attractions

2006-03-14T21:52:40+00:00

Christopher's first day of school may not be until September 2nd, but he'll get his first taste of school this week. As part of the process to determine whether he'll attend regular elementary school or a special ed school, he'll be evaluated for 3 days at the special ed school in Buchholz, this Friday, Monday and Tuesday. He'll be picked up by taxi the three days, and Christopher is as excited about that as he is about going to school.

Already last Sunday (yes, Sunday!) we had a home visit from one of the evaluators. Her initial impression was that Christopher would be just fine at regular school, but that decision will be made by the county.

For me as the stay-at-home parent this will be the first taste of the German school schedule, since Christopher will be home at 11:30 instead of the usual 3:15. There are no meals at school, unlike kindergarten where he gets breakfast and lunch. I wonder if they will give him homework as well.

(Does anybody recognize the title as Grace Kelly's best line from Rear Window?)

Good News

2006-03-13T20:35:13+00:00

In good news, my brother will be out of the hospital tomorrow. The biopsy last week revealed a cancer very similar to that he had 15 (not 10) years ago which responded very well to chemotherapy. In fact, he was much more comfortable after just one treatment. They've done the first set at the University hospital, and the remaining sets he'll be able to do closer to home. I imagine he'll be wearing a cap quite a bit the next few weeks.

With phone calls to the States costing less than one cent per minute, I'm sure our international phone bill this month will skyrocket to at least 3 Euros.

Who Turned The Heat Off?

2006-03-13T06:12:51+00:00

It was bad enough that we got 24 hours of snowfall on Friday, but the temperature this morning is ridiculous! So much for "meteorological spring" starting on March 1. The graphic is in Celcius, that's 5°F for Americans.

Good-bye, Kirby

2006-03-08T05:37:18+00:00

I didn't mean for PapaScott to become the weblog of death and illness, but sometimes you don't pick your memes, but your memes pick you.

I'm not sure I could explain anyone here in Germany how I feel about Kirby Puckett, and why I am mourning a retired sports star with a checkered private life who died young.

For one thing you'd have to understand America and sports. Sport (namely soccer) in Germany is at best a 50-50 proposition. If HSV were to win the Bundesliga or even if Germany were to win the World Cup, at best 50% of the population would be happy about it, while the other 50% could care less or would even resent it. In the US sports is more 90-10. When your team wins, your entire community, or city or state, wins, any your sports heroes are heroes for everyone.

Cities in America are pretty much alike. Minneapolis is pretty much like Des Moines is pretty much like Omaha is pretty much like Kansas City. Sport is one way we can differentiate ourselves from one another. People in Kansas City may be pretty much like us, but their team wears a different color. On the other hand, people in New York or Los Angeles are nothing like us, and it feels especially good on the rare occasions when we can beat the Yankees or the Lakers. Our sports teams don't just bring us together, they are us.

And thanks to Kirby Puckett, we were champions, twice. He was the most popular person to ever live in Minnesota, period. He didn't look like an athlete (5′8″ and built like a bowling ball; imagine Gerhard Asamoah with a few more pounds), but he was so talented, and publically so joyful, so likeable, so happy to be where he was, he wasn't just one of us, he was us. No man could live up to that myth, of course. After he was forced to retire he had a messy divorce, was charged with sexual harassment, became a recluse, and neglected his body to the point where he probably destroyed himself.

The myth has been gone for years, I didn't know the man at all, but I'm still mourning. I've tried, but I can't really explain it. Maybe others like Aaron Gleeman or Batgirl have explained it better.

Got Morphine?

2006-03-07T19:30:28+00:00

I was able to talk with my brother this evening. The pain is down to where he can sleep, albeit restlessly. The new CT scan revealed a large mass in his abdomen, and he's waiting rather impatiently for a biopsy to be performed. Only then will they know what the next step will be, either chemotherapy or surgery.

I told him about the T-shirt, and he wants one. It's on its way.

Puckett dies after massive stroke

2006-03-07T01:20:43+00:00

Minnesota Twins Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett dies after suffering a massive stroke. He was 45.

Life Sucks

2006-03-05T20:38:48+00:00

Sometimes life sucks, and then it sucks some more.

It isn't enough for my brother, who just turned 40, that he got divorced a couple years ago, lost his job last fall, and has a no-good girlfriend. He went into to the local hospital a Friday night with abdominal pains, which he's had the past 3 weeks but just couldn't stand any longer.

They did a CT scan and determined he probably has a tumor, and he should be checked out by an oncology clinic. It's the weekend, though, so he can't make an appointment until Monday.

Saturday night the pain is so bad he goes in to the ER at 11 PM. And again at 5 AM. The second time they keep him, and as I type this he's on his way to University Hospital in an ambulance with flashing red lights, a 120 mile drive.

The thing is, he's beat cancer (of the Lance Armstrong variety) once already, 10 years ago. Noone deserves to have to go through that again.

On the bright side, this should scare off the no-good girlfriend for good. Or she'll turn out to be not so no-good after all, which would be even better.

I'm thinking that maybe I should send him a Got Morphine? t-shirt.

Myth and Reality 2

2006-03-02T18:57:47+00:00

So, did you all do your homework?

The Newsweek article Myth & Reality is in our experience mostly correct. Germany seems to go out of its way to make it difficult to be parents in a two-career household, and career women. Parents are allowed 3 years of parental leave, with employers bearing most of the costs... with the consequence that employers simply don't hire women unless they can afford for them to leave for 3 years. Second incomes are taxed at such a high rate that after taxes, transportation and child care, there is no financial incentive left to seek work. And Germany's half-day school system ensures that second earners can work at best part-time.

Duncan points out that my own family has profited from Germany's generous family benefits. Not exactly, we profited in spite of the "benefits". My wife works for an American company, where it is encouraged to place women in positions of authority, even women with children. She also planned her leave carefully, taking only 1 year, and staying in close contact with her office. She's always been the main earner, and it would have been a disaster for us had her career stagnated. Luckily we were able to buck the system. Most of the college-educated mothers we know here have not, and are frustrated.

Keeping women out of responsible positions for ancient notions of "family values" is a luxury. Over half of university graduates are women. How long can Germany afford to encourage them to stay home instead of work?

Myth and Reality

2006-02-28T15:11:04+00:00

Newsweek International looks at family policy and working women in Europe: Myth & Reality "Forget all the talk of equal opportunity. European women can have a job - but not a career." This is required reading for all PapaScott readers. A discussion will follow. (via 11D)

Karneval in Nindorf

2006-02-27T18:31:21+00:00

Everyone is publishing Karneval pictures today! Here's Kamelle (candy) being tossed to the crowd of eager kids.

The parade participants are lining up.

More pictures of Karneval in Nindorf!

(In case you missed the irony tag, these aren't really Karneval pictures. Karneval isn't celebrated in northern Germany. These are from our visit to the WildPark in Nindorf yesterday.)

All Jabber transports suck

2006-02-27T18:28:40+00:00

All Jabber transports suck, and all Linux distributions as well. Thereore, sys admins will always be in demand.

One of the odd things about working remotely

2006-02-24T15:25:08+00:00

One of the odd things about working remotely is that when your company's hot new product gets a good review, you find about it in another blog via a Technorati search.

Dear Elena

2006-02-23T21:36:55+00:00

Dear Elena, on a parent's worst nightmare: "Grandparents are not supposed to bury a beautiful six year old. Neither are parents... It just happened so fast."

Clowns instead of Figure Skating

2006-02-23T20:18:50+00:00

For NBC, the Olympic figure skating final is the big show, almost as big as the Super Bowl. For the German TV network ZDF it's no show at all. Olympic programming this evening has been pre-empted for live coverage of Karneval in Cologne. Figure skating fans here have to wait for the late night wrapup... or switch to Eurosport, where the Olympic coverage is better anyway.

Two Great Hypes That Go Great Together

2006-02-21T10:07:05+00:00

Current top story at Spiegel Online: New H5N1 Cases: Bird Flu could endanger World Cup. Now if someone could tie in the Danish Mohammed cartoons, we'd hit the hype-trifecta.

If You Can't Trust Your Armored Car Company...

2006-02-20T18:43:54+00:00

Washington Post: Heros Files for Bankruptcy Amid Probe "Heros, a leading German money-transport company, filed for bankruptcy on Monday as authorities announced an investigation of suspected large-scale embezzlement... estimated (at) 300 million euros ($358 million)... (It is) estimated that Heros had a market share of about 50 percent." So, if you run any type of retail establishment in Germany, as of today you have no way to get your money to the bank. That's why Mama is working late tonight (although I'm not sure what she can do, buy a fleet of armored cars on EBay?).

Update: Here's a good one: deposits that were picked up by Heros over the weekend are being held pending the bankruptcy settlement. So that money you thought was in the bank on Monday actually isn't. Even if your money wasn't embezzled, you still lose.

Rhythm of Life

2006-02-19T19:53:37+00:00

"I want to see a film from the computer", Christopher just asked, "the one with men drinking beer and walking backwards." It took me a couple of minutes to realize he meant the Guinness Rhythm of Life spot that was making the rounds 4 months ago. How could he remember that?

2006-02-19T11:49:46+00:00

Tanja Hötzle, author for the German satire magazin Titanic, recently complained that Google found no hits for "Sexgöttin Tanja Hötzle". The German blogosphere has only been too happy to help fix this obvious flaw. But shouldn't the qualities of a true sex goddess transcend the artificial limits of national borders and language? As an expat blogger, is it not my duty to see that such important memes are released to the English-speaking world? Therefore, without further ado: Sex Goddess Tanja Hötzle.

Wipeout

2006-02-18T21:00:53+00:00

The Olympic TV coverage here is of course very German-centric, so we see mostly the events in which Germans do well, namely races involving skates, sleds, or skis (flat surfaces only, preferably with guns, especially women with guns). We did take the time to watch a very un-German sport, snowboard cross. The son of our hotelier, Hans Joerg Unterrainer, competed for Austria and finshed a respectable 15th. He won his first heat, but wiped out in the second. Apparently in snowboard cross wiping out isn't such a bad thing. Christopher immediately said he wanted to learn to do that... well, I guess there are more dangerous things he could learn. It's just that in northern Germany there are no hills and no snow.

Every day, in every way...

2006-02-17T19:43:42+00:00

I used to think that "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better" was just a silly quote from a Pink Panther movie (it's Dreyfus' mantra in the mental hospital), and was thinking of making it the tagline for PapaScott. But searching for the exact quote on Google revealed that it is actually a serious self-help philosophy. How boring. And disappointing.

Christopher and Kopaka

2006-02-17T18:49:03+00:00

Christopher wanted to send Grandma a picture of his new Kopaka. Actually, he wanted to send four pictures. He insists the different toys in the photos are very important. OK, if he says so.

Dead Last

2006-02-14T14:05:56+00:00

DFL is a weblog devoted to last place finishes (you have to finish to be noted) at the Olympics. Unlike Dave, though, I know what the acronym DFL stands for.

Chinese Google

2006-02-13T18:49:22+00:00

Airbag: "I've heard rumor that upon using Chinese Google, the great Shahs of Iran have asked the search engine giant to come and index their Internet too. They are tired of searching with the word Jews and being bombarded with thousands of results about a 'Holocaust' in the 1940's."

Happy Birthday To Me

2006-02-09T07:41:00+00:00

I thought I'd waste some of my wife's international GPRS units to wish myself a happy 44th birthday. Some things are just worth the extra cost and effort, even when one is away from home.

Same Procedure As Every Year

2006-02-04T05:30:49+00:00

We’re gone. Again. To Leogang. In Austria. See you. Again. Same time. Next week.

Bloggers are Often Self-Loving Eccentrics

2006-02-03T21:05:36+00:00

German Joys: "Bloggers are Often Self-Loving Eccentrics" (in Spiegel Online). Why "often"? Shouldn't that be "always"?

Mabber Me

2006-02-03T11:11:46+00:00

This week my employer* launched the beta of mabber, a web- and mobile-based instant messaging service. Big deal, you might think. There are already established IM services with web-based clients, and there are already universal web-based clients like meebo.

But mabber is a big deal. It's do-it-all-in-one-place and do-it-anywhere instant messaging. Most reviews have concentrated on the web-client, but that's not where the magic is going to be. (Quite frankly, I find the web-client very distracting, and when working I use a traditional client to connect to mabber. That works, too.) The big deal is going to be the mobile client. Mabber is going to be quicker, easier, and more interactive than SMS. And cheaper, too, even after we start charging for mobile access and even if you are on pay-per-slurp data plan.

And since it runs on the XMPP/Jabber protocol, it can use existing interfaces to ICQ, MSN, AIM and Yahoo!, and of course other Jabber services like Google Talk.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried the mobile client yet (it won't load on my Blackberry). So I don't know if anything I'm saying about it is true. The key is going to be how easy it is. If it's a pain to install and contacts have to be added manually, it's not going to work. If it is truly easier to use than SMS, we'll have a killer app.

In the tradition of Google mabber is an invitation-only beta, but we're pretty loose with invitations. I'm only peripherally involved with the project, since it runs out of our second (count them, two!) data center in Düsseldorf; my involvement is mainly 'keep everything else running so we can concentrate on mabber'. Of course there's a mabber blog. And the whole service is run in both German and English, our first project that goes beyond German-speaking countries.

Oh, you can mabber me at shanson@mabber.com

*Actually, mabber bears the imprint 'interdings GmbH' rather than nu2m. I'm sure there's some legal / corporate / tax reason for that. I do know that Nico was pleased as punch to land the domain interdings.de.

Update: ~~I wasn't clear enough. If you'd like an invitation, you don't have to beg. Just send a mail to info -at- mabber -dot- com.~~ You no longer need an invitation. As of 12 April registration for mabber is open to all.

Cooking with Spinach

2006-01-31T05:45:34+00:00

I'm sure he does it just to shock us, but Christopher regularly requests spinach for supper. He didn't learn to like it from his parents, neither of us can stand the stuff. Now the spokesperson for spinach in Germany is not Popeye, but the ex-model and ex-TV personality Verona Pooth (née Feldbusch), who in commercials said that her spinach is "the one that goes blubb" when it cooks, and even put out a spinach cookbook. Paris Hilton couldn't have said it any better.

Four Things

2006-01-29T10:14:09+00:00

I was afraid I'd end up with this... Thanks to Hal for tagging me with Four Things

Four jobs I’ve had:
Cleaner in a butcher shop
Police radio monitor for a major newspaper (night shift)
Receptionist
Accounts payable clerk

Four movies I can watch over and over again:
Casablanca
To Have and Have Not
Rear Window
From Russia with Love (or any James Bond film with Sean Connery)

Four places I’ve lived:
Eureka, CA
Fortaleza, Brazil
Wickenburg, AZ
Kiel, Germany

Four TV shows I love:
none

Four places I’ve vacationed:
Yosemite National Park, CA
Boundary Waters Canoe Area, MN
Rovinj, Croatia
Leogang, Austria

Four of my favorite dishes:
I'm losing weight, I can't think about that right now

Four sites I visit regularly:
The Hardball Times
Parent Hacks
A Fistful of Euros
Allesaussersport

Four places I’d rather be right now:
Home with my family (I'm already there)
In a sauna
The Sonoran Desert
Watching baseball

Four bloggers I’m tagging:
Christina
Duncan
Karl
Dave

Google Gone

2006-01-28T19:51:04+00:00

I've removed the Google Adsense ads from PapaScott. Sure everyone seems to do business with China these days, but this is my personal site. They can buy their links someplace else.

Mouse Heads

2006-01-28T09:01:48+00:00

Mouse Heads?!?

And if you think there's any truth to this map, then you, too, are a mouse head. (via Der Denkpass)

Update: Actually, we've always thought of Canada as the land of screaming orgasms. But then again, we've only been to Thunder Bay. I'm not sure if all of Canada is like that.

Stumbling Blocks

2006-01-27T10:34:58+00:00

Cem Basman describes the "Stumbling Blocks" in front of his house that commemorate victims of National Socialism who had lived at that address.

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Snowball Fight

2006-01-25T21:04:54+00:00

Never bring a knife to a snowball fight. FC St. Pauli leads Werder Bremen 3-1.

Modest Swimwear

2006-01-25T07:37:58+00:00

Modest Muslim Swimwear and Modest Christian Swimwear. I can't detect the difference.

I'm not sure what modest pagans are wearing. (Modest links via Andrew Sullivan.)

Volle Halbtagsgrundschule

2006-01-25T06:57:46+00:00

christina: I'd rather stay inside but today is my last after school ('after school' in Germany being 12:45 p.m. - go figure)...

Me: And I am so looking forward to that this fall! :-(

christina: Even worse if it's not a verlässliche Grundschule- then they can send them home any old time.

I think I've complained before that the concept of substitute teachers is unknown in Germany. If a teacher is sick or doesn't show up for some reason, they send the kids home.

In that sense we're lucky, Jesteburg has a Volle Halbtagsschule, "full half-day school" (the link is even in English), which means the children aren't just supervised during empty hours, but are guaranteed to have 5 hours of instruction with certified teachers each day. The concept was tested in Lower Saxony in the '90s, but was discontinued and replaced with the cheaper verlässliche Grundschule. Our local school fought to keep their system and won.

For first graders the school day is only 4 hours, though, mornings from 8 to 12. I'm not sure if anyone would want to employ a sys admin who has to be home by noon every day.

The New Economy

2006-01-24T16:29:36+00:00

Wonkette: "Welcome to the 'new' economy. It’s new because you’re not in it."

Breakthrough

2006-01-23T05:06:46+00:00

On weekends, Christopher likes to wake us up. He'll crawl under the covers between us, crouch together for a few seconds, then suddenly spring up, taking the covers with him, and shouting "Surprise!" Typical kid stuff. Last weekend he had a real surprise for us in bed. Out of the blue he said, "When I grow, I won't stutter any more." It was the first time we heard him use the word stutter.

The next day it got even better. Our "homework" assignment was to explain Christopher's stuttering and progress to a trusted adult. Christopher didn't need to participate in the conversation, but he needed to be present. The idea is to make him comfortable with discussing it openly, not to feel ashamed or embarrassed.

We were in a restaurant with his old Tagesmutter, and we started explained how his words sometimes hop before they some out and what he has learned to do when that starts to happen. Then Christopher chimed right in and started describing the different techniques he has learned. There is rubber-band speech, tractor speech and race-car speech. There is frog speech (a syllable hops three times) and snake speech, each in slow and fast variations. He demonstrated them all, and make us repeat after him. It's now easy if you've never practiced, and he delighted in pointing out our mistakes.

At our next appointment with the therapist we discovered how he had opened up. The two of them together had taken a large piece of paper and drawn a path of his progress the past 18 months, and his goal for this summer (which is to get thrown out the window on the last day... that's the tradition they have for the children that will be starting school). The path was full of twists and turns and had various triumphs and obstacles along the way. Christopher is very good at visualizing streets and maps, he can point out Australia and Florida on the globe. The point he seemed to pick up is that if you get stuck, it's OK to take a detour. You don't have to go forward all time... sometimes you have to back up and take another route.

Zimbra Collaboration Suite Beta 3

2006-01-23T04:02:00+00:00

I've been looking for a workgroup system to replace our aging SLOX (SuSE Linux Open Exchange) server. My favorite candidate is Zimbra, an open-source and commercial system which features an innovative storage and clustering system on the back-end, and a slick AJAX browser interface on the front end. It's still in beta, though, and is only supported on Red Hat systems. And the performance of the betas I've tried has sucked rocks.

A new beta came out this month, with news open-source builds for non-Red Hat distributions. I tried a Red Hat build first, for Fedora Core 4. The performance still sucked. Just for fun, I tried out the SuSE 10 build in a VMWare system. To my surprise, the installation was smoother and the performnace was better than under a real (non-VMWare) Fedora Core on the same machine. So now I'm confused...

Just to further complicate things I see that there is now a live-demo CD of Open Exchange (the successor to SLOX) available, so I'll have to look at that as well.

Bathroom Walls

2006-01-20T19:09:23+00:00

Jean-Remy von Matt is head of the Jung von Matt ad agency which concieved the "Du bist Deutschland" campaign. A lot of German bloggers have expressed the opinion that the campaign is baloney, and so it's no surprise that Herr von Matt doesn't like weblogs:

Weblogs, the bathroom walls of the internet. What gives every PC user the right to excrete* their opinions? Most bloggers simply excrete. This new low point in the building of opinions is clear when one searches for 'Du bist Deutschland' at www.technorati.com.

Nico Lumma is only too happy to oblige big media types, so just for Herr von Matt he presents the site klowaende.de, which is basically blogg.de with a bathroom wall skin.

*Translator's note: the German original uses the verb 'absondern', which is a new word for me. It means to secrete, excrete or lactate, but also means to separate. It may have a slang meaning which I'm totally missing.

Oh What A Beautiful Morning!

2006-01-19T21:59:58+00:00

Today got off to a wonderful start. At 4:30 Christopher announced he wasn't feeling good and crawled into our bed (exceeding the capacity of exactly 2 adults). An hour later he said he had to throw up, then did just that (after going into the bathroom, thankfully). So he stayed home from Kindergarten.

As I flipped open my PowerBook, it couldn't get a WLAN connection. The access point had gone completely dark. Bricked. That certainly puts a cramp in the home office. Luckily I thought of sharing the WLAN connection on the Mac Mini. That works just fine, so we don't need a new access point immediately. Just soon.

Finally, the pump on the washing machine (manufactured in 1990) is refusing to work at an increasing frequency. Unfortunately the Mac Mini can't substitute for that, even Firewire can't keep up with the flow.

And all this before 7 am! A full day before it was even light out.

Wikipedia Outlawed

2006-01-19T12:19:20+00:00

The newest trend in Germany seems to be to ban parts of the internet. After Heidi Klum's father and the Sozialgericht Bremen, someone in Berlin is trying to ban Wikipedia.

Of course, since Wikipedia is hosted in the US, the German courts don't have any jurisdiction. They did manage to put a temporary restraining order on German domain www.wikipedia.de to prevent it from redirecting to de.wikipedia.org.

Silly fools. Don't they realize that if Wikipedia is outlawed, only outlaws will have Wikipedia?

Misrouted SMS

2006-01-18T18:27:42+00:00

I just got the following SMS from a number I didn't recognize:

Priwet lida kak dela

Since I don't recognize the language, I don't know if it is as good as the last misrouted SMS I got a few years ago (at 4 in the morning):

Hab meiner Frau alles gestanden

(I've admitted everything to my wife)

Time Management for System Administrators

2006-01-18T07:43:07+00:00

I just got the book Time Management for System Administrators from O'Reilly. I hope I can find time to read it.

Mozilla Amazon Browser

2006-01-18T06:28:00+00:00

Mozilla Amazon Browser is a rich application to browse Amazon without all the distracting fluff on the website. (via Lifehacker)

Chicking Martha

2006-01-17T07:31:47+00:00

Caterina.net: Chicking Martha, as in Martha Stewart, as in dismissing and belittling a talented woman. Believe me, that's absolutely the last thing you want to do.

Kindergarten Cop

2006-01-16T20:39:00+00:00

Back before the fall election I wondered whether Angela Merkel had the right stuff and experience to lead a national government, since she had never acutally led a government of any type, only a party. Turns out that instead of a government she got a grand coalition, and her experience herding the Kindergarten boys Stoiber, Koch and Wulff was perhaps the perfect training not only for shepherding junior coalition partners, but for foreign policy as well.

First she soothed the Polish beast with a few billion euros to save the EU budget summit. Then she manages to satisfy domestic opinion and get on George W's good side during her first visit to Washington (the trick: announce in advance that we don't like Guantanamo, but say it very softly, and don't press the point). And today she tells Putin that even though she speaks Russian, she's not his buddy like Schröder was.

I thought it was interesting that George W. remarked that it was "uplifting to talk to somebody who knows the difference between just talking about tyranny and living in freedom and actually done it". I know serving as a minister in the Kohl cabinet was tough, but I wouldn't go quite that far.

One Cent

2006-01-16T18:57:42+00:00

According to teltarif.de, the cheapest rate to call the US is currently 1.0 cent per minute. We can't even make local calls that cheaply. Even Skype Out is more expensive.

I forget what we were paying way back when Mama and I were still a-courting, but I have vague memories of 5 DM for 3 minutes or 75 cents per minute from the States.

Career Planning

2006-01-16T17:40:17+00:00

Groundhog Day: “With my personal computer, I can now do, much faster, things I never used to have to do at all.” Yep, that pretty much sums up my career planning.

Hermann

2006-01-13T20:16:02+00:00

This is Hermann, our new family member for the next 10 days. Christopher brought him home from Kindergarten, and he seems to be a sourdough of some sort. If we treat him right, he will give birth to 3 Hermann-children, and we can bake a cake.

Until then, though, he has to be cared for quite carefully.

Day 1. Hermann needs rest.
Days 2-4. Hermann needs exercise. Stir once each day.
Day 5. Hermann is hungry! Feed him with 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. He then needs a bigger bowl, otherwise he will run away.
Days 6-9. Hermann needs time to digest. He needs a daily walk. Stir once each day.
Day 10. Feed again with 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk.

He is then ready to give birth to 3 children (1 cup each, to be given to good friends), and with the rest we can bake a cake (recipe to follow, or just click on the photo).

Christopher has already memorized the instructions and is making sure we follow them to the letter. Today is Day 1, and despite the rest Hermann seems to have a bad case of gas. We've had to open the cover several times.

It's Your Heimspiel

2006-01-12T07:10:43+00:00

World Cup doesn't start until summer, but Mama has already brought home her first World Cup swag. But I don't get it. Why the Denglish? We don't watch much TV, but apparently this is Coca-Cola's main advertising slogan in Germany for the tournament. Mama couldn't explain it either, she just shrugged and said "It's supposed to rhyme".

So what slogan are they using in the rest of the world, "It's your Auswärtsspiel"?

Technical Translation

2006-01-11T18:17:32+00:00

A friend of my sister-in-law is looking for a technical translator, and
she thought that perhaps a reader of PapaScott might be qualified and
interested in the job:

"Who is able to either correct a translation of a technical text from
German into English or to translate it totally on his own? The text to
be translated is the homepage of a German company (see
http://www.sintertechnik.com), and the translator should have some
knowledge in areas such as high performance technical ceramics (for
example ceramic bearings), development and processing of specific
ceramic powders to the pressing and firing of ceramical parts (like
spray-dried powders), as well as electroceramics (EMC- Electromagnetic
compatibility, VDR - voltage dependant resistors, multilayers, capacitors).

"If you think that you are the right person for this task, please
contact me at jurgen@schell.elcom.ru."

Sticky Hardware

2006-01-11T07:02:13+00:00

This week we threw some more hardware at blogg.de and the other websites hosted by nu2m. This time it seems to be sticking to the wall (like noodles when they're done). 12 must be our lucky number:

6 webservers
3 database servers
2 load balancers
and a firewall in a pear tree

The rack isn't full yet, but the switch and the power strips are now maxed out.

SkyScout

2006-01-08T06:49:30+00:00

I usually don't get excited about gadgets, but the SkyScout is a telescope that tells you what you're looking at which sounds pretty cool to me.

Knut

2006-01-07T21:21:36+00:00

In the spirit of ecological renewal, we have returned our Christmas tree to mother nature and have planted it in our backyard, to once again contribute precious oxygen to our earth's atmosphere.

Perhaps, though, we should have thought of that before we bought a chopped tree.

The Hammer

2006-01-07T16:13:12+00:00

My wife isn't usually very interested in my work, but she was looking for a quick trip to someplace warm and turned to weg.de, our travel portal. Suddenly she exclaimed "That's the hammer! Two clicks and I'm where I want to be!" Well, weg.de is pretty easy to use. I didn't even tell her to check there, so all those billboards must be working.

Outage Resolved

2006-01-05T05:13:08+00:00

That outage at work just before Christmas turned out to be a software problem in legacy code on one of our minor sites. It cropped up a couple of more times last week, and ended up costing me 12 hours during a holiday week when I was supposedly on vacation, mostly because I at first misdiagnosed it as a hardware problem. Once I had it isolated, I simply shut the site down and went back on vacation. This week a programmer was able to spot the bug within minutes, and the bad site went back up.

It was a learning experience. When the router is not working, it's probably wrong to assume that the router is broken. Legacy code is a time bomb waiting to explode. And the biggest threat to your network is probably behind your firewall, not in front of it. I "knew" all that already, but now having lived it, I now really know it.

Could You Pass the Test?

2006-01-04T20:58:51+00:00

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test? You have to know some esoteric facts.

1. How many times can a senator be re-elected?

2. In what month is the new President inaugurated?

10. What country did the US fight during the revolutionary war?

Watch out, you might not be a citizen, even if you think you are.

Could You Pass the German Citizenship Test? It applies only if you are Muslim, and live in the state of Baden-Württemberg. But then your opinions had better be politically correct.

23. You've heard of the attacks on September 11, 2001 in New York and on March 11, 2004 in Madrid. In your opinion, were the perpetrators terrorists or freedom fighters? Explain your answer.

24. The newspapers sometimes report about cases of daughters or wives being killed by family members to "protect the family honor". What is your opinion of such actions?

29. Imagine that your adult son tells your that he is homosexual and that he would like to live together with another man. How would you react?

I think I prefer the US test. At least it applies to everyone.

You Never Forget

2006-01-02T07:35:14+00:00

Jeremy Zawodny remembers his first web server 10 years ago. He sure had it good. Static IP address? Direct Internet connection? My first memories of running an Internet server was a mail server running UUCP over a 36K analog modem. My firm at the time was just over 50 km away from Hamburg, our access point, so we were paying expensive Deutsche Telekom long distance rates to get our mail and update our website. Good thing spam hadn't been invented yet. That was at least a step up from the CompuServe address we had been using until then. Oh yes, those were the days.

The first web server I had that I could put my hands on was at my next company at the turn of the century and the peak of the bubble. That 400 MHz Pentium was among inventory sold to employees as the company headed to bankruptcy, so I bought it and it's now the firewall and router in my basement.

Equality of the Sexes

2006-01-01T19:12:13+00:00

The German women's team has already won the World Cup, and I don't see any reason why men cannot achieve the same as women.</p>

Chancellor Merkel on the 2006 World Cup in her New Year's Address. By the way, her daily calendar is available as an RSS feed.

Wordpress 2

2006-01-01T15:39:00+00:00

Yesterday I updated PapaScott to Wordpress 2. I haven't looked all that closely at it, but all the plugins I use still work and posting with MarsEdit is quite a bit faster. However, my two main pet peeves with Wordpress remain. First, there is no export function (so if you want to move your Wordpress blog to another system, prepare to learn a lot of SQL). Second, if you want to move a site to a new URL (if you want to test a new version, for example) you have to edit the database manually (otherwise the admin pages all redirect to the old URL).

Snow Angel

2006-01-01T10:18:14+00:00

New Year

2006-01-01T08:23:11+00:00

We've been busy this week, with Christmas, Christopher's birthday, and his Grandmother visiting for 2 weeks. We spent New Years Eve at home and managed to hit a number of German New Year's Customs, eating raclette (with enough leftovers for a repeat performance tonight), drinking Feuerzangenbowle, and watching "Dinner For One" (twice). We skipped the Bleigiessen and the jelly doughnuts. Christopher and I instead napped for a bit before midnight to rest up for the fireworks. Sounds like our evening was pretty much like at Christina's, where you can read what the New Year's greeting "Guten Rutsch" really means.

Alas, tomorrow is the start of a normal work and kindergarten week. Mama even gets to fly to Munich overnight to start the year. Grandma will be here all week, though.

Happy Landings!

2005-12-31T10:51:39+00:00

Here's wishing everyone a happy and soft landing in 2006! (The Champichute is via Cem.)

Never Ending Holidays

2005-12-26T15:36:40+00:00

The fun never stops. Today we have our traditional goose leg dinner, in preparation for the big day tomorrow. Grandma is even arriving from Minnesota tomorrow morning. Mama's already reminded me to update my weblog sidebar.

Christmas Traditions

2005-12-25T08:14:38+00:00

At our house we leave milk and cookies for Santa (or, as he's called in Germany, the Christmas Man) on a sled. He comes at dusk on Christmas Eve, while we are attending the children's church service. We leave the back door open for Santa, since our chimney is sealed off. He leaves his present on the sled, and also delivers packages from Grandma and eBay.

These are all Christmas traditions we just made up. We suspect that this will be the last year Santa makes such a grand performance, since next year Christopher will be a sophisticated 1st grader and may have his doubts about the Christmas Man.

Looking at the photo now online, I see we had heavy winds in our living room, some of the candles are leaning quite badly.

Mass dodo grave

2005-12-25T02:51:24+00:00

Scientists find 'mass dodo grave', which is no surprise to anyone who has seen Ice Age.

Outage at blogg.de

2005-12-23T22:23:07+00:00

We've just recovered from a massive network outage at blogg.de (as well as the other sites hosted by nu2m.de). We were down for about 6 hours. All interfaces on our router would freeze immediately upon restart, and it took me a while to figure out the cause (it wasn't the router, so I wasted a couple of hours working on that). Everything now seems to be back up. The hard part will be figuring out why it happened and keeping it from happening again.

I'm the sole admin in Hamburg, and it's been a long, lonely evening.

Eggnog in Quantity

2005-12-23T13:56:24+00:00

Eggnog in Quantity: "Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is just enough."

Cheney's iPod

2005-12-23T12:48:43+00:00

Cheney's iPod: first in line of succession for power outlets on board Air Force II, blocking reporters from charging their notebooks. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has problems keeping his iPod charged.

Sleep Two Times

2005-12-22T09:22:30+00:00

Christopher is excited that he only has to sleep two more times until Christmas Eve. Mama and I both agree that we'd rather have another week.

Our Christmas card features the sled photo from last month. We've done our cards the past few years at the USPS CardStore, and they mail them for us, too.

Night Train

2005-12-19T20:17:39+00:00

Last week I had the opportunity to fly to Cologne for our company Christmas party, a dinner in a dark restaurant. The experience reminded me how glad I am that my job involves no travel. Giving up 12 hours for perhaps 90 useful minutes of face time doesn't seem to me to be a good bargain. That my boss Nico rather mournfully explained that he has taken some 80 flights this year didn't change my opinion of business travel.

However, this week Mama has really drawn the short straw. She has planned for weeks to spend an entire day with Christopher in kindergarten this week. At work she has visitors tomorrow, and a day-and-a-half of meetings in Düsseldorf Wednesday and Thursday. She was able to cancel out of Thursday, but has to stay in Düsseldorf until 9 pm Wednesday. There are no flights to Hamburg that late. In order to keep her promise to Christopher, she's taking the train back to Hamburg that evening, and will get home at 2 am so she can take him to kindergarten in the morning.

No, I do not envy business travelers at all.

Persistent Garbage

2005-12-14T05:41:38+00:00

Two weeks ago at blogg.de we stopped accepting xml-rpc pings because, quite frankly, the data coming in was 99% garbage, either non-German blogs or out-and-out spam. Today we are still receiving between 300 and 500 requests per minute on the xmlprc domain. Since the change the outgoing bandwidth peaks according to cacti are 2 MBit/s less than before. That's a lot of garbage.

Midterms

2005-12-13T17:38:12+00:00

Last summer Christopher was approved for the first six months of speech therapy kindergarten this school year. Last week was a further "exam" for the 2nd six months, as mandated by the state. That's understandable, since the therapy is expensive and completely subsidized (with no means test... we pay nothing, regardless of income). In practice it makes absolutely no sense to change kindergartens in mid-year, so we were really hoping for approval. We got it.

We also got a written report on Christopher's progress. We already know how he's doing, of course, but it's nice to have something formal to show to school officials, since the registration process for first grade has already begun. Our goal is to have Christopher attend the local grade school rather than a separate speech program. Since he is coming from a special ed program, he'll be tested whether he is fit for first grade. We will be part of the decision process, but the decision is ultimately made by the county.

We now that the written report that Christopher has a "moderate stutter, for which he actively employs breathing techniques and which has not hindered his intellectual or emotional development" and the opinion of the state expert who would "absolutely recommend" that Christopher attend regular school. So that's two points in our favor. The next step is an exam for the county in January.

Top 10 System Administrator Truths

2005-12-13T16:37:29+00:00

Top 10 System Administrator Truths "#1 – Users Lie". Yep. Via slashdot, but it's good anyway.

The Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005

2005-12-11T18:02:43+00:00

The Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005, so I understand the buzzwords my boss uses.

Eugene McCarthy

2005-12-11T07:12:17+00:00

StarTribune: Minnesota senator shook world in '68. Eugene McCarthy died yesterday at age 89. He took down LBJ in the New Hampshire primary in 1968, but lost the nomination to fellow Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey. McCarthy went into a sulk, left politics, and became a poet.

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us

2005-12-09T20:34:14+00:00

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us. Let's hope they don't break it like they broke blo.gs.

VPN Part 2

2005-12-07T21:53:01+00:00

So, as I was saying, I was looking for a simple and workable VPN solution. OpenVPN seems to fill the bill. Here are the points that impressed me the most.

It runs on any Unix-like system or even Windows. The server is not tied to a particular operating system or Linux distribution. I was able to switch back and forth between FreeBSD and SuSE Linux servers with ease.
The connection can run on a single UDP port. It can been tunneled through a firewall with ease, and several clients can run behind a single firewall.
Software installation on the client is extremely simple. The configuration is a text file, but one only has to edit a couple of lines.
Authentication and encryption is done with standard OpenSSL certificates. If you can set up certificates for a web sever, you can set up certificates for OpenVPN. They even include a simple structure for setting up your own certificate authority (or you can use TinyCA or the native OpenSSL scripts).
The networking is set up on the server side, and the routing information is pushed to the client. DHCP options like DNS and default domains can also be pushed to the client. Even for a site-to-site VPN, the configuration is all on the server side.

The howto was extremely helpful for setting up the server, and answered all the questions that I had.

I've been running an OpenVPN client (using the Tunnelblick, a primitive GUI) for nearly a week now, and I'm already convinced. I don't want to go back to using SSH-tunnels. For OS X, you'll probably want a script to adjust your DNS when connected, and you probably don't want to downgrade privileges to nobody. Linux worked well on the command line. I wasn't as impressed with the Windows client, but I don't use Windows much at all, so maybe I was missing something.

It's not as simple as PPTP for clients, of course, since PPTP is built into Windows and OS X. But for users with more than basic needs, it's worth switching to OpenVPN.

Chancellor Redirected

2005-12-07T09:48:24+00:00

The web server for http://www.bundeskanzler.de/ will helpfully redirect you if you have forgotten that the Chancellor is now female.

moneyball:~ shanson$ GET http://www.bundeskanzler.de/ <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <script LANGUAGE="JavaScript">  </script> <noscript> <META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0;URL=http://www.bundeskanzlerin.de"> </noscript> </head> <body BGCOLOR="White"> </body> </html>

Head Butt

2005-12-07T05:12:37+00:00

In the "Sport is stranger than real life" department, in a particularly chippy Bundesliga match last night between Duisburg and Köln, the Duisburg coach starts arguing with an opposing player on the sidelines (strange enough). The coach then gives the player a head butt, turns to the TV camera, and falls theatrically to the ground. This is soccer, not American football, nobody's wearing any helmets! Even if you don't read German, you can see the pictures at allesaussersport.

Puzzled and Bemused

2005-12-07T04:44:41+00:00

I was reminded of PapaScott's 6th anniversary (and indeed that of all early adopters of editthispage.com) not by Susan's post, but by a couple of strange comments that got past my spam filter. They came at the same time, from different IP addresses, were posted to a throw-away entry, seem to be written by the same person, look like spam, but were aware that PapaScott was 6 years old that day. Color me puzzled and bemused, and thank you, I think. And congratulations to ETP veterans everywhere! We're still not rich, but maybe we can forge an entry on Wikipedia giving us credit for this weblog thing.

The Two Most Powerful Women On The Face Of The Earth

2005-12-06T19:23:47+00:00

In the middle must be Hillary's shadow... (photo from Spiegel Online)

Nikolaus Report

2005-12-06T17:39:33+00:00

Since all the expat blogs seem to be reporting on Nikolaus activities today, here's a quick recap from our house. For us the Nikolaus is a messenger boy for Santa Claus, so we have Christopher prepare his wish list (this year consisting of the entire Lego Bionicle catalog) for him to deliver to the big man. Christopher does have an American Christmas stocking he uses instead of a boot, but this year the Nikolausi was lazy and left a white Bionicle on the patio in the rain. Christopher was up at quarter-to-seven to pick up the loot, no photographers were awake enough to capture the event.

'ssh' verboten

2005-12-05T09:40:55+00:00

Funny, when I first tried to publish the VPN post yesterday, I kept getting the strange error 'Precondition Failed'. PapaTech is hosted at TextDrive, and it turns out they do some very aggresive filtering with mod_security, including the names of certain Unix commands like 'ssh', 'wget', and 'echo' which can be used in HTTP requests to run commands on unsecure servers. The side-effect is it's not possible to mention 'ssh' (without quotes) on a site hosted at TextDrive.

Actually, at TextDrive you can disable mod_security in your .htaccess file, or even modify the stock ruleset, but it doesn't work if you proxy lighttpd in front of their Apache, like PapaTech does.

Cats in Sinks

2005-12-05T08:15:52+00:00

Cats in Sinks, for very undignified cat pictures (via Jeremy Zawodny's linkblog)

VPN Part 1

2005-12-04T22:12:24+00:00

I've always been somewhat intimitated by VPNs. I've never really used them myself, being content with openssh-tunnels for my work. At my old company Netlife I inherited an IPSEC site-to-site VPN to a branch office, but I never had to touch it until we shut the office down.

VPN was on my initial to-do list at nu2m, and I was happy to find the open-source firewall m0n0wall with PPTP and IPSEC VPNs included onboard. We don't need VPN for our remote offices, as our provider organizes their DSL lines behind our firewall (using VRF, virtual routing and forwarding). PPTP works fine for individual users, they just need a username and a password, and a client is included in both Windows and OS X. I can assign them IPs and control where they can go in m0n0wall. By default the clients direct all traffic to the internet through the VPN, which is fine for occasional users. Heavy user have to set up their own routes.

PPTP on m0n0wall has its drawbacks, though. The Berlin office had a Windows VPN server of its own, and we were never able to connect to it after they were behind the firewall. M0n0 insisted on grabbing all PPTP traffic for itself. (The workaround was to set up logins for Berlin on our VPN server.) And we were never able to run more than 1 PPTP client behind the firewall at one time, something do with the the magic of GRE packets. As for IPSEC, I was never able to get it to work. I could connect, but I couldn't reach any hosts beyond the firewall. I suspect that with 2 firewall hosts and the VRF, our network is like Shrek's onion. It has too many layers.

We now have a partner that needs several clients to connect to our LAN simultaneously. PPTP doesn't cut it, because their firewall allows only 1 PPTP client at a time. So I'm going to have to overcome my intimidation and come up with a way to slice the onion. I think I've found the ginsu knife to do it. More on that later...

In Front of the Dakota

2005-12-04T20:14:52+00:00

It was 25 years ago ~~Wednesday~~ Thursday that John Lennon was killed. Has it really been that long? It's an event (like the Challenger explosion) that I remember vividly and that changed how I felt about myself and the world. I had just started college, I was working at the student radio station at the U of M. Ihad the Sunday morning shift, so I was on the air for the world wide minute of radio silence 6 days after his death. (via curry.com)

Happy Flaming Advent

2005-12-04T08:55:52+00:00

I've ranted before about how the fascination with fire in Germany is downright dangerous, now in Hamburg we have a concrete example:

She forgot to blow out the candle on the Advent wreath. At 8 pm the last employee left the Uhren-Becker jeweler on Ida-Ehre-Platz - 90 minutes later the shop was in flames. It took hours for fire fighters to get through the iron gate and bullet-proof glass protecting the shop and to bring the fire under control. Damage is in the millions.

It's unclear whether insurance will cover the loss. A neighbor of ours works for Becker, he'll be busy the next few weeks tallying the damage.

Happy Bionicle Advent

2005-12-03T21:12:42+00:00

An Advent scene created by Christopher.

Safer Travel

2005-12-02T22:41:22+00:00

Bruce Schneier on airport security. "Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else...is security theater." (quote lifted from kottke.org)

Frozen Food

2005-12-01T09:48:40+00:00

Hey, for Nena it looks like the Nikolaus came early!

Actually, I'm sure she brought the present herself and left it at the front door. It's been there all night, since none of us felt like picking it up last night, so it must be frozen solid by now.

Buzz Me Not

2005-11-30T18:39:42+00:00

Dave points to a device that emits a sound teenagers can't stand, but older adults don't notice that might keep kids from hanging out in front of convenience stores. But does it work better than classical music?

Snow Day

2005-11-26T09:34:50+00:00

Snow in the backyard.

Christopher didn't want to miss it.

Neither did the cat. (5 minutes later she returned with a mouse.)

Is is just me or is Bloglines not grabbing feeds?

2005-11-25T20:53:56+00:00

Is is just me or is Bloglines not grabbing feeds?

Oh, I guess it's not just me.

Fire The Admins!

2005-11-25T20:27:30+00:00

Sometimes it pays to read those spam-bounce messages....

Message from yahoo.com.
Unable to deliver message to the following address(es).
<admin@yahoo.com>:
This address no longer accepts mail.

So when did Yahoo! fire all the admins?

Performance Increase

2005-11-25T07:59:02+00:00

After tuning the database at blogstats, it's nice to see this in mytop:

up 0+16:02:43 Queries: 7.4M qps: 136 Slow: 1.0

Exactly 1 slow query. Looks like we did something right. I can't really take the credit, though, it was my colleague P (whom I not sure I can name).

Google at the Border

2005-11-24T21:35:21+00:00

Be careful what you put in your weblog. US Customs and Border Security may not be reading it now, but they may check Google when you try to enter the country, and you might be refused entry.

A Blog Named PapaTech

2005-11-24T12:49:24+00:00

OK, let's see if this works...

In an attempt to separate the exciting stuff from the boring stuff, I've moved all my tech-related posts to a separate weblog, PapaTech (running on Typo under Rails). You can decide for yourself whether you find the expat/personal stuff at PapaScott to be exciting, or the hip/technical stuff at PapaTech, or neither (in which case, why are you even reading this?).

I'm going to try to automatically put summaries of the PapaTech posts at PapaScott, so if things break, that means it's not working yet.

Hamsters on the Autobahn

2005-11-23T21:37:41+00:00

Today on the way to judo Christopher started singing the Radio Hamburg jingle... and we weren't even listening to Radio Hamburg. He then said he wanted to be a radio announcer, and proceeded to give a traffic report. On the Autobahn 7 traffic was being held up by hamsters on the roadway, and the police were asking motorists to avoid running over the hamsters.

He then said it was just a joke, and that there weren't really any hamsters on the autobahn. Too bad that radio announcing seems to be a dying profession. I don't even listen to Radio Hamburg, although Mama sometimes turns it on. The parody this morning of Angela Merkel singing Dancing Queen on her first day in office was kind of cute, though.

Blogstats down, will be back

2005-11-23T18:40:42+00:00

We don't seem to have made an official announcement, but I can say that the 'back soon' sign at blogstats.de is not a message of disaster or impending doom. We reorganized the database, and it took longer than we thought. The database is done, the code just has to be adjusted, and I'm sure the blogstats site will be back up first thing in the morning, if not sooner.

Update: Well, obviously it's taking the coders longer than we thought to adapt to the new database setup. Data is being collected, we use the same data source at blogg.de, and I'm sure (I hope) blogstats will be back up shortly. Update 2: Just as I posted the update, the page was reactivated. Well, mostly.

Did I mention I love Bruce Springsteen?

2005-11-19T22:09:20+00:00

Did I mention I love Bruce Springsteen?

Deer and people clash in Minnesota

2005-11-19T21:13:35+00:00

CNN.com - Deer and people clash in Minnesota, right in St. Paul, since in urban areas there are no predators and no hunting. Too many deer is a problem around here too, although it hasn't been as bad the past few years thanks to the unseasonably cold winters.

Born to Run DVD

2005-11-16T09:00:48+00:00

Thanks, Haiko, message received. :-)

Flowers, anyone?

2005-11-14T07:30:41+00:00

I shouldn't try to read before I've had my coffee. I see that FTD is to start blogging, and I wonder what blogging has to do with flowers. But wait, of course, ftd.de is something completely different, the Finanacial Times Deutschland, and has nothing to do with cheesey TV ads with Merlin Olsen.

Reichstag in November

2005-11-13T10:25:57+00:00

We took a quick trip to Berlin this weekend. Mama had a fundraising gala to attend, and we brought Oma along as a babysitter. The next morning Christopher took us to the Dome atop the Reichstag.

We took some pictures (slideshow).

Moon Mission

2005-11-08T20:18:15+00:00

Before going to bed, Christopher decided to take a quick trip to the moon. Here he is in his spacesuit.

Here you can see his backpack with oxygen supply. The flag was Mama's idea.

PapaScott on Rails

2005-11-04T19:33:10+00:00

PapaScott on Rails. An experiment. About time I start checking out this Ruby on Rails fad...

Actually, getting Rails and FastCGI to work at my hoster wasn't all that tough. And as for typo, there's a few issues to deal with after converting the WordPress database, but I could make it work if I wanted to. And maybe I want to.

Update: I've taken down the test Typo blog, but I'm now using it at PapaTech.

Things An American Can't Do In Germany: Get a Official ID Card

2005-11-04T15:24:48+00:00

When you move to Germany, one of the things you have to get over is registering your address with the authorities, the Einwohnermeldeamt. Yes, it's evil, but probably less evil than (like in the States) having your credit information available for anyone to buy. And there once you've opened a checking account, obtained a telephone, applied for a driver's license, registered to vote and filed a tax return, anyone who wants to is going to have your address anyway...

But I digress. Everyone here has to register their current address. But only German citizens get a plastic card that documents that, namely a Personalausweis or ID card. It's pretty handy, in fact you can travel throughout most of Europe with it instead of a passport, and it is accepted as identification for just about anything for which you need to identify yourself, and it's pretty much assumed that everyone has one. That favorite American ID card, the driver's license, won't work here since German DLs never expire and don't include an address. Strangely enough, the auto registration does include a current address, but no picture.

But foreigners can't get a Personalausweis. You need to rely on your passport and the paper receipt from the Einwohnermeldeamt. Technically you are required to carry identification with you at all times. In 15 years, though, I've never been asked by the police for identification. Actually, I hardly ever carry my passport with me since I'm afraid I'd lose it. I do have a photocopy of the important pages in my billfold, and I've been told that that will suffice.

Sometimes I've been asked to show my passport and registration when I least expect it, when performing suspicious and sensitive activities such as changing telephone providers, renewing my cell phone, or renting a video. Then it's a pain not to have a Personalausweis.

Radical Trim

2005-11-03T22:15:28+00:00

We just trimmed our wild roses down to the ground and had several trees removed, and we've discovered things in our backyard that we had forgotten we had. Like natural light. And neighbors.

Update: Here are a couple of 'before' pictures that show how high the roses were. They grow like weeds, so in a year or two they'll be that high again.

Things An American Can't Do In Germany: Open An Account with Fidelity

2005-11-03T07:59:52+00:00

We've had an ongoing problem with our finances the past few years. Our lifestyle just hasn't been keeping pace with our (or, more correctly, her) income. We can't manage to spend the money that comes in during a normal month, much less keep up with the bonuses and stock options that seem to regularly turn up. Our bank has been of some help, but it hasn't been enough. So this summer when yet another bonus arrived, we decided to enlist the services of German branch of Fidelity Investments for help.

We had had an account with Fidelity several years ago. One very handy thing about it was that Fidelity accepted US checks without charging any fee. At the time we still had an American bank account to pay off our last American debts, and had had some bad experiences with wire transfers. One time a thousand dollar transfer to Minnesota was lost for over 6 months; it turned out it had gotten stuck in St. Louis and noone noticed. Our Fidelity account had been closed for awhile, since we had closed all unnecessary accounts in 1999 in preparation for Mama's year-long unpaid maternity leave, so we had to reapply for an account. So we filled out application and had our identities certified by the local post office (which took over half an hour, since we had a novice clerk and I had to explain where to find the necessary data in my foreign passport).

A week later we received a letter rejecting our account. Fidelity Deutschland cannot do business with "US persons", namely me. In fact, they said they should have never opened the original accounts (which they still had on file). Back then they didn't use PostIdent, they just took our money. Sure enough, on the last page of the Terms and Conditions was a clause regarding not opening accounts for "US Persons". They suggested I open an account with Fidelity USA. However, to open an account with Fidelity USA you need an US address. So I guess expats can't do business with Fidelity, period.

So in the end Mama opened an account in her name only. It's her money anyway. The funny thing is, now they had two applications on file for us, and they ended up opening 2 accounts, one for each of us, and each with an automatic monthly investment. That was going a bit too far in solving our financial problem, and we just this week got that straightened out.

Knastblog

2005-10-28T19:15:05+00:00

Knastblog is a new German prison blog. It's looking for "prisoners, family members, lawyers, social workers, pastors, volunteers or corrections workers" to submit entries. (via Transblawg)

Slow News Day, Wilma?

2005-10-24T16:58:23+00:00

I enjoy McDonald's news as much as anyone, but why is "McDonald's touts 'quality' in ad campaign" the 4th "Top Story" at cnn.com?

I Not Heart Jabberd

2005-10-24T07:55:34+00:00

When I started last winter at nu2m, our web sites ran on One Big Server For Everything (OBSFE). It's very difficult to upgrade or do maintenance on an OBSFE, since when it breaks, everything breaks, and people tend to get upset when that happens. So my job the past few months has been to network, cluster, cajole developers to get their apps to work in a cluster, and delete all references to 'localhost' from all configuration files. (In a cluster, localhost is not what you think it is, it's a black hole, so just forget it exists.) Late last week I was finally done. Nothing more was running on the OBSFE, all websites and databases were ported, and I was free to format and reinstall the OSBFE to become an upstanding member of our cluster.

Except for one thing. The jabberd server. Our company depends on jabber for internal communication, and we had a jabberd on the OBSFE tied to an external IP address. Fine, I thought, just move the whole thing to a new server, put the address there, and it should work. It did, but only half way. Clients could connect, but servers could not and all transports (connections to AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.) were broken as well. OK, back to the drawing board. I ended up setting up everything from scratch, taking a day and a half for a job I thought would take a couple of hours (and I'm not done yet), and I came to hate the beast that is jabberd. Note that the following comments are completely subjective, and may have no basis in fact.

The jabberd server consists only of a jabber server, which is fine if you only want to talk to yourself and other jabber servers. The transports to other services are what make jabber really useful and interesting, and they are all separate little projects. Good luck finding current and working versions for them. And don't confuse jabberd with jabberd2. They are completely separate projects and have nothing to do with one another.
The host setup is somewhat arcane. Jabberd works fine out of the box if you have a single box with a public IP open to everyone. Now most of us in the real world have firewalls and NAT to protect our servers, with private IPs on the servers themselves, and divide the services for a domain among several servers. Through trial and error I found a setup that worked (main hostname uses a private name, public hostnames set up as additional hosts).
The latest jabberd is 1.4.4, which contains major changes to the previous 1.4.3.1. The published installation instructions no longer apply, and all previous transports will not compile correctly. The workaround is to complile the transports against the old versions and copy the .so files into the new version. This information seems only to be available in the mailing list archive, but is essential especially for AIM and ICQ to work.
The MSN transport requires a curl library with SSL certificates. The SuSE curl packages don't include the certificates, so the transport fails with strange error messages. The are also 2 different packages you can use, a msn-transport (which we have) and a pymsn. I couldn't find a homepage or any current information for msn-transport.
The current Yahoo! transport contains the wrong hostname to connect to Yahoo! You have to know this, search the mailing lists for the proper hostname, and correct the configuration by hand.

After a day and a half I'm to the point where everything seems to work from the outside and with any domain I point to the server (without using any external IPs, yay!). Now I just have to get it working for the internal network. Then I can finally get rid of the monster OBSFE!

Dragon Hunters

2005-10-22T08:18:09+00:00

This Is Not A Replica

2005-10-21T15:57:48+00:00

While Christopher and I were catching colds in Germany this week, Mama was in southern Italy, where she got to hold the World Cup. Yes, that World Cup.

Credit Cards in Germany

2005-10-21T05:48:50+00:00

German Joys notes a story in the Christian Science Monitor on the lack of acceptance of credit cards in Germany compared to other countries in Europe. It included this strange quote from a "high school student":

When I want something I pay for it myself. It's a question of honor.

The article tries to make the point that the "German mentality doesn't get into debt", but at the end notes that consumer bankruptcies are on the rise. They must be getting into debt somehow, probably with overdraft lines of credit at their banks and purchases from catalog merchants like Otto and Quelle. Bank cards are also widely accepted, and are cheaper than credit cards for both the merchant and the consumer. They also tie in nicely with your overdraft protection. So why pay extra to get and use a credit card?

We tend to use our credit cards a lot, but only to collect frequent flyer miles from Lufthansa.

High School

2005-10-18T06:02:47+00:00

I graduated in 1980. Jimmy Carter was still President.

My hometown is exactly 1 mile square. If in summer you stood in the middle of any street, you could see cornfields at both ends.

In band I played bass clarinet. Nowadays I wish I had learned bass guitar.

I was active in speech, debate and theatre. Our best play was "Diary of Anne Frank". I also enjoyed doing lights.

Until my junior year I took the maximum number of classes possible. I then needed only one credit to graduate, and slacked off my senior year. The system was rigged; it was impossible to earn enough credits to graduate as a junior.

I was an AFS exchange student to Brazil the summer after my junior year. My wife was an exchange student with AFS in Minnesota. We met because we were both wearing an AFS sweatshirt at a church youth function.

I played tennis, but not very well.

We had computer classes. Thanks to MECC, even our small high school had timeshare access to a mainframe in Minneapolis. At first we typed in BASIC programs on punch cards and ran them over an acoustic couple. Later we got an Apple II where we could work locally and play Breakout.

My hometown lies on the 45th Parallel, exactly halfway between the North Pole and the Equator. It is also nearly equidistant from Minneapolis, Fargo and Sioux Falls.

After my experience in Brazil, I wanted to study International Relations. I went to the University of Minnesota rather than a rural public or Lutheran college because they offered Portuguese as a foreign language.

There were 88 students in my graduating class. Three classmates died before we graduated, one from leukemia, two in car crashes. I'm rather certain that affects me even today.

I was in a car crash myself while driving to my wife's prom. I never made it; the car was totaled, I needed stitches. She found a new date that very evening.

Our 25th class reunion was this summer. It was two weeks after our vacation in Minnesota, so I missed it.

Jealousy

2005-10-17T16:18:21+00:00

Aaron Gleeman on the White Sox reaching the World Series:

Of course, I was rooting against (the White Sox) the entire time. In fact, with the Twins out of it, my entire postseason viewing experience has essentially boiled down to rooting against the White Sox and Yankees. But hey, Chicago is four wins away from their first championship since 1917, the Twins stink, and I'm jealous. Feel free to gloat all you want, because I'm sure I'd be doing the same thing.

Homework Finished

2005-10-14T17:31:14+00:00

Thanks to everyone who helped with my homework from yesterday. You all answered as expected and helped prove the point that our therapist was trying to make to us. A year ago our answer would have been the same.

It is natural for us to associate stuttering with stress or fear. We've all had experiences where we have reacted perhaps by stuttering, or perhaps by hesitating or shuddering. Therefore, when we hear someone stutter, we project that experience onto them and immediately think of stress and fear.

This is important for Christopher to know and understand. He cannot control how people will react to his stutter, and he will need to have the self-confidence to deal with the various reactions.

In fact, it is now believed that the primary cause of stuttering is genetic. A Speech1 gene has been isolated, and it is even believed that the tendency for persistance and recovery for stutterers is based on genetics, although one cannot yet predict whether a given person will recover. However, early treatment is important. If stuttering persists into puberty, it will most likely persist through adulthood.

Stuttering is absolutely not related to bilingualism.

Tell Her About It

2005-10-13T16:27:33+00:00

Rainy Day:

Most commentary on Germany tends to be grave and devoid of humour, but through the tears (Timothy) Garton Ash does manage to retain his wit. Referring to the country's "endless TV discussion shows" he says: "Germans may not like change, but they love talking about it." Dead on...

Or, as my boss Nico says, the Sabine-Christiansenization of politics.

Homework

2005-10-13T07:44:42+00:00

Christopher's speech therapist gave us a homework assignment to ask 3 poeple a question. I'm going to cheat and do it on the Internet, and ask my readers to help me.

What causes people, especially children, to stutter?

Please leave your answer in comments or by mail in either English or German. We're looking for spontaneous opinions, not correct answers, so please don't Google. Thank you!

Looting

2005-10-13T05:02:14+00:00

German Joys: "It's been 3 weeks, and they still don't know who's running the country? Shouldn't there be looting by now?"

Serendipita

2005-10-12T05:09:46+00:00

I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I just noticed that Andrea's Weblog is now Serendipita with her own domain. It's the oldest continuously running German weblog. And funny how most of us editthispage.com veterans are now on WordPress. We've all been blogging so long, shouldn't we all be rich by now?

Update: Er, I mean second oldest.

Rub a Dub Dub

2005-10-11T19:17:12+00:00

inactualfact wonders today why all English-language movies and TV series shown here are dubbed into German. I used to be bothered by this, but I'm not anymore, probably because most movies I watch these days are on DVD with an English soundtrack. Anybody want a useless Fargo DVD with German soundtrack only?

What does bother me is that for many movies the title is completely changed in German. How is anyone supposed to know that North By Northwest in German is "The Invisible Third", or that Animal House is "I Think a Horse Kicked Me", just to name two examples. You'd think for Animal House they'd at least come up with something with food fights or cucumbers.

As for why everything is dubbed, I imagine it's because it's always been done and now the German audience expects it. Or maybe because the Nazis wanted everything in German. Who knows.

m0n0wall 1.2

2005-10-11T16:01:40+00:00

My favorite firewall m0n0wall has released a new version.

Mum's The Word

2005-10-10T05:54:48+00:00

You know there's some serious action going on under the covers when politicians hide from the press. That's currently the case here, where 3 weeks after the election the Union and SPD are now meeting secretly "under 8 eyes" to hammer out the framework of a grand coalition. There's still some squawking coming from the understudies, but the main players are keeping their mouths shut.

The press thinks it knows what the cabinet could look like... Merkel as Chancellor, SPD with 8 ministries. Whether Schröder can get over his ego to be Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister remains to be seen (my guess is no). But once they start talking to the press again, we'll know they're done. Maybe today.

Die fremde Braut

2005-10-09T15:20:36+00:00

While zapping through the stations on my car radio, I came upon an interview with Necla Kelek, German-Turkish sociologist and author of Die fremde Braut (The Foreign Bride), on forced marriages and the situation of Turkish women in Germany. She also tells the story of her own family who came to Germany when she was 10. This post is a reminder to myself to read the book. She's also speaking this week at the Goethe-Institut in Boston, and a short review is at signandsight (scroll down).

On Becoming a Problem Child

2005-10-07T05:31:22+00:00

This (via instapundit) made me think immediately of parties and weblogs in Germany:

I have the distinct impression that the Democratic Party sees the liberal blogosphere as being inside the tent, while the Republican Party views the conservative blogosphere as being somewhere between an irrelevance and a minor nuisance. Maybe this is true, at least in part, because many prominent 'conservative' bloggers (Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Stephen Green, and Eugene Volokh spring to mind) are not exactly stalwart Republican party loyalists but rather libertarians (or whatever) who put routinely put their principles ahead of party interests. Alternatively, maybe the Democrats have just decided to follow Lyndon Johnson's advice about keeping your critics inside the tent peeing out rather than outside the tent peeing in.

Of course Germany here is a couple of light-years behind the US, but it's interesting that while the SPD thinks politics on the internet means writing weblogs, the CDU thinks it means sending spam.

Verisign buys weblogs.com

2005-10-07T03:59:59+00:00

Verisign buys weblogs.com. I guess everybody's selling something these days.

Cool Box

2005-10-05T11:29:41+00:00

I don't know if the new SUSE Linux is any good, but the box is sure cool.

I need help to speak better

2005-10-03T19:50:47+00:00

This evening in the bathtub Christopher suddenly told Mama, "I need help to speak better." This is the first time he's spoken so directly to us about his stuttering.

It's a big step for him, and very timely. His speech therapist has suggested that the time is right for us as parents to become directly involved with his therapy, for us to start attending some sessions and actively participate. We know that she's told him that "Mama and Papa want to help". It's a wonderful sign that he trusts us and himself enough to ask directly.

Drupal and me

2005-10-03T19:18:34+00:00

This weekend I've been working with the Drupal CMS platform for the Naturheilzentrum Drochtersen website that I set up for my brother- and sister-in-law.

I looked at a number of packages. I've been away from Movable Type too long to be able to shoehorn it into a traditional CMS. The page feature in WordPress was not sophisticated enough for the 4 layers of menus and approx. 50 pages. Mambo/Joomla seemed too inflexible for the given layout and menu struction. With Drupal the first hurdle is the documentation; I was unable to find a simple howto to get started.

Once I got into it, I found that Drupal could do 90% of what I needed, which is as good as anyone could hope for. I'm going to have to fiddle with the menu code get the highlighting right, but the functions are 'themeable' and there's a well-documented (although somewhat convoluted) API.

One stumbling block is that the layout for the website and the admin interface are the same, so I had to do a lot a CSS fiddling to import an existing layout without breaking the admin interface. A nice feature is the wide choice of theme engines; simple tags were not enough for me, however with PHPTemplate I was able to implement what I needed in PHP.

The live site still contains static pages from City Desk, but once the menus are tamed I'll be able to put the Drupal site online.

Space Shuttle

2005-09-30T18:49:29+00:00

With the sun, 9 planets, and the moon.

Big Big World

2005-09-29T07:41:07+00:00

Seeing how my boss and some colleagues current are moving to Cologne (or not), I can't but think back on our big move...

It was 1987, and we were happy young urban professionals in South Minneapolis. We owned a townhouse, my wife had a good job, and I was in grad school. Then the Twins won the World Series, and everything changed.

It had nothing to do with the Twins, of course. But as the playoffs started that fall, my wife's boss announced he was selling the business and moving to Arizona, taking his supervisor and several low-level employees with him. My wife's position would remain with the new owner, she was in effect sold with the company.

About the same time, I realized that I didn't really want to be an economics professor when I grew up, dropped out of grad school, and started working in the real world.

Things did not work out with my wife's new boss. All her friends were in Arizona, happy in the land of sun and fun. We were unhappy and jealous. Her old boss didn't have a job for her, but he would be expanding real soon and she could perhaps work a few months for an acquaintance of his until he was ready for her.

However, our young urban townhouse was just a bit too urban. We were on the fringe of a drug neighborhood, and while police raids with bulldozers on crack houses are exciting to watch, they don't do much for property values. Having financed 95% of the purchase price, the townhouse was now worth much less than what we owed. We couldn't afford to sell, even more so with our student loan and credit card debt.

So we wanted to leave, but we didn't have jobs and couldn't sell our house. So what did we do?

We left, in May 1989. We left the house with my brother, packed 3 cats and everything we owned into a U-Haul, and drove to Wickenburg, Arizona, a desert nest on the road from Phoenix to Las Vegas where we could work for 6 months.

The job with the old boss never materialized, we ended up losing the townhouse (we sent the bank the keys and let them foreclose), and we had arrived in Arizona just in time for the Savings and Loan bust and recession. So moving to Arizona was the dumbest thing we could have done, right?

Wrong, it was the smartest. In Arizona we made the connection that brought us to Germany. In August 1990 we once again packed everything we owned, this time into a shipping container, and we and the 3 cats boarded a plane for Hamburg.

Libertarian Democrat

2005-09-25T19:17:38+00:00

A lot of people are trying the the politics test. The German Wahl-O-Mat called me a Green Neo-Liberal, this test calls me a Libertarian Democrat.

You are a Social Liberal (85% permissive) and an Economic Conservative (66% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian. You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.

At least I'm consistent, even across borders.

Lie To Me

2005-09-25T16:34:31+00:00

Netzeitung: Voters lie to pollsters, maybe because they've been lied to so often? (via Bordbuch)

Good Tickets

2005-09-24T19:38:38+00:00

It turned out the luxury lounge HSV tickets for the match against Bayern weren't so bad after all. We did have seats outside, so we didn't have to stay in the lounge. And the home team ended up winning, beating Bayern for the first time since 1996.

It was my first HSV match since 1990. I was very impressed by the atmosphere in the AOL Arena this time, and I'll probably go again (even without the luxury business lounge).

Today's tickets were a gift for Mama's nephew, a huge Bayern fan (who was of course deeply disappointed by the result). Christopher and I were supposed to chaperone, but when Christopher turned out not to be interested, we had a ticket left over. Rike seemed to enjoy the buffet.

Rocket Science

2005-09-24T06:39:59+00:00

When you build a rocket from a cardboard box, you first need to draw the blueprints.

MySQL Tip

2005-09-22T21:18:22+00:00

When tuning a MySQL server, you shouldn't go too overboard when assigning RAM to key_buffer_size for the indices. The server will be much more stable if you leave some RAM free for programs and the data.

I Want to be a Strong Knight!

2005-09-21T19:55:12+00:00

Christopher drew this castle for his speech therapist to show how he feels about stuttering. He wants to be a strong knight! He wants to be able to defeat the words that sometimes come at him like cannonballs being shot in the heat of battle. He wants to be a strong fighter!

He never speaks this directly to us, or if he does, we're simply too close to him to pick up the message. He and I did have a good laugh the other day. I was reading to him and stumbled over some long German word. I made a funny noise and tried to start over, but he started laughing and I just had to join in. He knew how I felt, and he knew I that knew how he feels.

Our role in his therapy is to let him be strong as much as we can, to create situations where he can feel strong and to try to avoid situations where he feels weak and becomes discouraged. One thing we are trying is sport. The kindergarten suggested that we enroll him in some local afternoon activity to give him contact with other kids, kids not part of the sheltered kindergarten. We thought about art, or music, or a group sport like soccer. But once we heard that he wants to be a strong knight, we decided to follow through on the fighting theme and to try judo. There's a group in Buchholz for 4-6 year olds on Wednesdays.

Christopher was skeptical at first, but now after 4 weeks he's agreed that it's fun to run around on the mats, and to throw and to be thrown. It also helped that we told him that judo is a good sport for astronauts, since that's his current 'what I want to be when I grow up'. We're sure it will help him deal with those verbal cannonballs as well.

Snow Chaos

2005-09-20T18:31:00+00:00

Since the tooth fairy paid a visit to Christopher last night, today he was able to purchase the top item on his wish list: a Siku snowplow. This morning his speech therapist suggested that shaving cream would be the perfect material for a snowplow to, well, plow, so of course he had to try that out this evening (slideshow).

What was Schröder on?

2005-09-19T18:02:52+00:00

signandsight: What was Schröder on?

There was something surreal about Gerhard Schröder's appearence on national television last night. Although his party was second in the polls, Schröder saw the victory quite clearly as his own. And anyone who saw matters differently, an idiot.

ChicgoKarl is guessing it was sparking white wine.

Before and After

2005-09-19T16:54:51+00:00

Before

After

Who's On First?

2005-09-18T19:42:36+00:00

The Union is just 0.8% ahead of the SPD in the latest count, and the media are speculating that the notorious overhang seats could give the SPD a majority in the Bundestag. So maybe that's why Schröder grinning so broadly in the 'elephant round' in ARD/ZDF (video), At AFOE Tobias Schwarz speculates that Schröder may lead a grand coalition, and maybe that's not so far fetched.

Nobody Wins

2005-09-18T17:05:58+00:00

BBC says 'Slim victory' for German right, but I would say that Schröder and Merkel both lost. Both SPD and Union lost several percent compared to 2002, neither Red/Green nor Block/Yellow has a majority. The big winners are the neo-liberal FDP (over 10%) and the neo-socialist Left/PDS (over 8%). The most likely result is a grand coalition of Union and SPD, a coalition of losers.

Heiko wonders about a Jamaica coalition of Union/FDP/Greens. That would be a mathematical possibility, but is practically impossible.

McCafe Elmshorn

2005-09-17T20:59:20+00:00

Today we visited a new McCafe in Elmshorn, northwest of Hamburg. It's a coffee bar inside a regular McDonald's restaurant, and the idea is relatively new in Germany, although it apparently hasn't gone over well in the US. Here they seem to be redoing the entire restaurant rather than creating a separate coffee area. In Elmshorn you sit on leather seats whether you are eating a Big Mac or drinking a Latte.

We took some pictures (link to slideshow).

Teppich Angie

2005-09-17T16:54:45+00:00

Campaign billboard for Angela Merkel on the A23 near Tornesch, north of Hamburg. Unusual because billboards are banned along German autobahns, but here the CDU has rented space on a pylon for a carpet store.

Unpacked and in the Rack

2005-09-16T13:26:25+00:00

Just so Nico knows that I take good care of the toys he buys for me. The bottom two are a week old, the top two are new today. (The locks are just for show, the keys are all in the glove compartment.)

This is my first experience with Dell servers. They are nice and easy to install, I'll take more anytime.

Round Numbers

2005-09-16T02:52:43+00:00

The head of Der Spiegel's Berlin bureau sums up Germany's budget dilemma in the Wall Street Journal: Say it Slowly: 'Zukunftsangst'.

A glance at the state's finances shows how dramatic the situation is: Of 190 billion euros in tax revenues, 80 billion is passed on to the cash-strapped state pension system, 30 billion goes to the unemployed, and another 40 billion belongs to the banks, just to service debt. The rest is not even enough to pay the bureaucracy and to build roads. Ever-new credits are constantly needed so that Germany at least has the appearance of a prosperous country.

Of course the politicians never put it this directly, and the press only very rarely. It reminds me of the quietest room in hell. Everyone stands in a vat of raw sewage up to the lower lip, and the only sound is a mass whisper. "Don't make waves. Don't make waves...."(via vowe)

Tiger in your Tank

2005-09-15T19:14:31+00:00

CNN.com - Inventor denies dead cat fuel story: "A German inventor said he has developed a method to produce crude oil products from waste that he believes can be an answer to the soaring costs of fuel, but denied a German newspaper story implying he also used dead cats." Good thing I read BildBlog, so I already knew that you can't make bio-diesel from cats. But maybe that's why our cat leaves so many dead mice on our patio... they're meant to power my Lupo!

Christopher Explains the Solar System

2005-09-15T17:30:43+00:00

Christopher gives a seminar on the solar system using two flashlights.

Here is the sun and Mercury on our dining room ceiling.

The Falling Man

2005-09-11T20:48:40+00:00

It's been 4 years, maybe I can handle the details now. Esquire: The Falling Man

They began jumping not long after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building's fatal wound. They jumped from the offices of Marsh & McLennan, the insurance company; from the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading company; from Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors - the top. For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the courage to jump himself or herself. One photograph, taken at a distance, shows people jumping in perfect sequence, like parachutists, forming an arc composed of three plummeting people, evenly spaced. Indeed, there were reports that some tried parachuting, before the force generated by their fall ripped the drapes, the tablecloths, the desperately gathered fabric, from their hands. They were all, obviously, very much alive on their way down, and their way down lasted an approximate count of ten seconds. They were all, obviously, not just killed when they landed but destroyed, in body though not, one prays, in soul.

Yes, I can read the entire article without breaking down. I hope that's because I've become harder and not because I've forgotten the day.

We had nothing... now we have even less

2005-09-11T06:54:25+00:00

Sen. Barack Obama on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts:

We had nothing before the Hurricane. Now we have even less.

I hope that we all take the time to ponder the truth of that message.

He was quoting a hurricane victim, but I think he meant all of us. (via Davos Newbies)

Nazi sabotage from beyond the grave

2005-09-09T07:46:47+00:00

A Fistful of Euros: Nazi sabotage from beyond the grave A true horror story.

Quality Time

2005-09-09T05:06:34+00:00

One disadvantage of living so far from kindergarten in Winsen is the long bus ride. Christopher is first on his route, so while kindergarten starts at 8:30, last year he would be picked up at 7:15. And Christopher is absolutely not a morning person. Good thing that breakfast is served in kindergarten, so he could sleep until 5 to seven.

This year a new out-of-the-way stop was added to his route, and the driver asked if he could come at 7:00 the first day. That was fine with us for one day, except it turned out not to be just one day, but every day, dragging Christopher out of bed at 6:40. We finally asked the kindergarten Tuesday evening if they could rearrange things. They didn't know Christopher was being picked up even earlier than before, but noticed that he was more tired than usual. The next day they had a new plan.

They are now basically sending a bus just for Christopher. The other stops for the bus are right in Winsen, so Christopher now rides nonstop from Jesteburg to Winsen. He rode the new bus for the first time yesterday afternoon, arriving 15 minutes earlier than usual. I asked the driver when she wanted to pick Christopher up this morning, and she asked if 7:30 would be OK.

7:30. An extra half-hour of sleep. We're in heaven.

Noone Saw It Coming

2005-09-06T10:47:32+00:00

Noone knew the levees would break? Even Mr. Bill knew! (3.2 MB WMV, Link 2, Transcript with Link). (via Accordion Guy)

Twenty-Two Years

2005-09-06T07:06:39+00:00

We went down to the courthouse
and the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle
No flowers no wedding dress</p>

That was twenty-two years ago. Tonight we are getting together after work, leaving Christopher with his Oma, and driving off together to.... a parent-teacher meeting at the kindergarten that neither of us really wants to attend.

We really know how to celebrate our anniversary, don't we? Or not.

A Recipe for Waffles

2005-09-04T09:19:35+00:00

A recipe for waffles, since we never seem to have one handy when Christopher is hungry for waffles.

How Could This Happen in New Orleans?

2005-09-04T06:41:08+00:00

People in here Germany (she for example vowe for the past few days) how the chaos in New Orleans can happen in a highly-developed first-world country? One answer is that New Orleans was not in real good shape even before Katrina. At 11D I saw a quote from Nicole Gelinas of City Journal (a conservative urban planning journal) that seems to sum things up.

And the locals and outsiders who try to help New Orleans in the weeks and months to come will do so with no local institutional infrastructure to back them up. New Orleans has no real competent government or civil infrastructure—and no aggressive media or organized citizens’ groups to prod public officials in the right direction during what will be, in the best-case scenario, a painstaking path to normalcy.

The truth is that even on a normal day, New Orleans is a sad city. Sure, tourists think New Orleans is fun: you can drink and hop from strip club to strip club all night on Bourbon Street, and gamble all your money away at Harrah’s. But the city’s decline over the past three decades has left it impoverished and lacking the resources to build its economy from within. New Orleans can’t take care of itself even when it is not 80 percent underwater; what is it going to do now, as waters continue to cripple it, and thousands of looters systematically destroy what Katrina left unscathed?

I have no personal experience with New Orleans, I've never been there, but it's no coincidence that the first three movies that came to my mind set in New Orleans all involve corruption.

Emergency Aid for Katrina at the German Red Cross

2005-09-03T12:54:02+00:00

I didn't notice it a couple of days ago, but now you can donate online for "emergency aid USA" at the German Red Cross. The donations are tax-deductible in Germany and you can pay by German bank transfer.

Mac in Mac

2005-08-27T06:59:03+00:00

On vacation I bought an iPod Shuffle. I couldn't plug it into my old PowerBook, so I had to get a Mac Mini (1.42 GHz / Combo Drive).

Seriously 'santana' (as in Johan) will be a nice companion to the 500 MHz PowerBook 'moneyball'. It has some amenities that moneyball lacks, and is small enough to move around the house if I want to use it upstairs. Managing music will be easier with a single machine for both Slimserver and iTunes (syncing an iPod via 802.11b is a pain). And thanks to OSXvnc I don't even have to sit in front of santana to use it.

Setting up santana was pretty boring. Just plug in a mouse and keyboard (PC keyboard works just fine) and it works.

Wahl-O-Mat

2005-08-26T14:07:58+00:00

I can't vote in the Bundestag election next month, and judging from the Wahl-O-Mat I think most Germans are happy with that.

I've said before I wish I could vote for a German greenish kind of liberal New Labour party, and this just proves it. (via Webpropaganda, among others)

PawSense

2005-08-24T03:35:06+00:00

"PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard." But what if you have a Tablet PC like Nicole? (via dangerousmeta)

I don’t think you can blame Noel Gallagher for Coldplay

2005-08-23T16:48:06+00:00

"I don't think you can blame Noel Gallagher for Coldplay"

Bonjour!

2005-08-23T13:42:12+00:00

"Bonjour!" exclaimed Christopher as he came into the living room last night.

"Pardon me?" we asked. "Where did you learn that?"

"On the computer. That's how they speak in France. Adieu!"

I think we have to control his computer usage more closely.

Miles per Dollar

2005-08-22T13:47:43+00:00

Dave's Picks:

The Fred Krause Miles Per Gallon is defined as the mileage obtained by a vehicle traveling 85 miles per hour with the air conditioner set on 'MAX.' My Camaro got nearly 35 FKMPG. My Blazer? Closer to 20. An even more useful measure is MPD (miles ger dollar), which turns it all into dollars. Until recently, I was getting a fairly solid 10 MPD, but the uptick in gas prices has wrecked that.

Hmmm, my Lupo gets 5 l/100 km at 0.99€ per l of biodiesel, which at $1.20 per Euro works out to exactly 10 MPD. So I can't complain!

Playmobil Lego Alliance

2005-08-20T14:24:06+00:00

Woe is us, our enemies have banded together.

In the background, the remains of O'Hare Airport....

Backyard Camping

2005-08-20T12:32:58+00:00

Karl went backyard camping with his sons last night. On vacation Christopher slept in a pickup bed with his grandmother, does that count?

Joey's Three Principles of Money

2005-08-13T10:05:57+00:00

Joey's Three Principles of Money:

More money is better than less money.
Money today is better than money tomorrow.
Real money is better than fake money.

Seems sound to me...

Saturday Shopping

2005-08-12T06:20:23+00:00

Only Germans would think that the internet is like Saturday afternoon shopping.

Wir sind ein Volk (ausser Bayern)

2005-08-11T20:19:32+00:00

Herr Stoiber, which part of "Wir sind ein Volk!" don't you understand?

Want to go for a slide?

2005-08-10T22:27:13+00:00

The Airbus plant in Hamburg-Finkenwerder is looking for members of area sports clubs (for example Blau-Weiss Buchholz) to participate in an evacuation test of the A380 to be conducted in January. The test is to evacuate over 850 passengers the aircraft via the emergency slides within 90 seconds. Applicants must be between 18 and 60, be of normal weight and must pass a medical check. Those accepted will receive 60 Euro, food and a free tour of the plant. (via Nordheide Wochenblatt, our weekly shopper)

Moving Blog

2005-08-10T07:18:11+00:00

My boss will be moving to Cologne this fall, and since he sees weblogs as the solution to all of life's problems, he has started a moving blog.

Moving is somewhat like sex... Americans do it better and more often. I've moved 12 times in my adult life, including cross-country and trans-continental, and 8 times since getting married (we can attest that moving is a good stress test for any relationship, although not nearly as good as building a house together). Moving is somewhat easier in the States since American apartments tend to include amenities like closets, floor covering, light fixtures and a kitchen, and are usually available (and can be vacated) at short notice.

To answer a specific question: how long can one live without a kitchen? Answer: 10 weeks. Due to the physical constraints of the space-time continuum, when we moved to Germany we brought 4 suitcases and 3 cats with us on the plane and our furniture arrived 10 weeks later. We first moved temporarily into a unrenovated 6th-floor apartment in downtown Kiel, our first experience without the aforementioned amenities of closets, floor covering, light fixtures and a kitchen. We begged, borrowed, and bought from 2nd hand shops, and somehow survived until the container with our furniture arrived and found a permanent apartment in Hamburg. We'd never want to do it again, but if we had to we'd skip the shipping container and instead set up a credit line at Ikea.

At the time we didn't yet have a child, which I imagine would increase the number of problems by at least a power of 2.

Bad Tickets

2005-08-09T18:50:55+00:00

My wife's company has been sponsoring the local soccer team for I don't know how many years now, and today for the first time she brought home match tickets. But somehow I don't think the tickets are very good.

For one thing, the match is against Bayern München, a team they haven't beaten in years and a match they are sure to lose.

And for another thing, the seats are behind glass and pretty far from the playing field. I'm sure we won't be able to see or hear well at all.

Well, the tickets didn't cost us anything, so I guess we should be happy that we'll be going to a game at all. At least they are for a league match and not for some meaningless international tournament.

Half Empty or Half Dead?

2005-08-07T08:14:35+00:00

BBC: Plane crash off Sicily kills 13

CNN: 23 saved after plane crashes in Mediterranean

Billboards Without Faces

2005-08-07T00:55:26+00:00

Originally uploaded by eris23.

The campaign season started while we were away, and this billboard now stands in front of our local supermarket. "We stand for the courage to wage peace. But what do the others stand for?"

I'm not exactly sure which war the SPD is claiming to have prevented. If they mean Iraq, that certainly didn't work, and sticking one's head in the sand and pretending a problem doesn't exist doesn't exactly require courage. What they really mean is "We stood up to Bush", implying that Angela Merkel wouldn't have. It's a whiff of anti-Americanism, and it will be interesting to see if the SPD takes it any further.

The other interesting thing is the ruling party chose not to use a photo of their candidate, even though Gerhard Schröder is personally more popular than Merkel. Which party is the challenger here? Then again, it's a strange election, where neither party wants to be the incumbant.

This is one of a series of "What do the others stand for?" slogans... other issues the SPD "stands for" include job protection, reform, modern family policy, and social justice. More billboards are at the Flickr group Wahl05.

Bomb. bay. doors. opened.

2005-08-06T08:53:06+00:00

Bomb. bay. doors. opened. Susan pauses her account of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima for 43 seconds.

Vacation Impressions

2005-08-05T12:38:19+00:00

Since I skipped blogging while we were in Minnesota, I'll list my impressions here (and keep adding new points as I think of them).

If you travel to the Midwest in July, you have to expect storms. Thunderstorms cancelled our flight from Chicago to Minneapolis, so we spent an unexpected 6 hours at O'Hare. A couple days later, a windstorm knocked out power to the cabin for 11 hours, which made cooking for guests, well, interesting. It takes a long time to boil water on a gas grill.
My wife thinks Minnesotans are boring because they always talk about the weather, but Minnesota weather is a lot more interesting than German weather.
We were too far from the Interstate for GSM reception, so our cell phones were basically useless. On the other hand, the town did have broadband, and we could sniff out some WiFi connections to read mail when we felt like it.
Small town radio sucks, since the programming is now beamed in from afar and the only local content are the commercials. We could only receive 1 TV station, so we didn't watch much TV either. We brought a stack of DVDs expecting to be bored, but we didn't watch a single one.
We didn't bring up politics, but everyone we talked to who did seemed to be against the war and knew someone stationed with a National Guard unit in Iraq.
I managed to mostly stick to my diet and exercise plan and lost 3 kg while we were there. I still have a couple dozen kilos to lose, though.
Christopher got to fish and drive the boat, which he's been looking forward to since Christmas. He even got to ride a few times on a 4-wheeled ATV.
We saw one of these Redbox DVD kiosks at a local McDonald's. We didn't realize Redbox was owned by McD. Here's a review.
The Lufthansa check-in desk at O'Hare was a catastrophe. But the Lufthansa pilot invited Christopher into the cockpit in Frankfurt, which more than made up for the inconvenience in Chicago.

Union/FDP loses majority

2005-08-05T05:43:51+00:00

Spiegel Online: Poll: Union/FDP loses majority. Infratest shows race at 48% (Black/Yellow) to 48% (Red/Red/Green), although the day before Forsa put Black/Yellow at 52%.

We're Back

2005-08-04T14:30:07+00:00

We're back home from vacation, but we're still sleeping off the jet lag. We'll take the Do Not Disturb sign down from the front door tomorrow.

Pause

2005-07-19T18:23:53+00:00

Closed for vacation. See you in August.

Who Are You Going to Believe?

2005-07-19T06:39:39+00:00

Why is it that Christopher doesn't believe us when we tell him sensible things like it's not good to eat too many sweets and that he should go to bed on time, but he'll believe a total stranger who gives him a magic candy jar that refills itself at night when it is emtpy? And when it doesn't refill itself the first night, it's because the jar has "lost its powers".

When In Doubt, Throw It Out

2005-07-17T20:57:17+00:00

Q Daily News: Computers as disposable commodities "Rather than cleaning their computers of viruses and spyware, people are now throwing the machines away and buying new ones."

90% of Everything is Crap

2005-07-16T08:58:52+00:00

It doesn't take much to get the German blogosphere riled up. This time it was a column at netzwelt.de that asserted that most weblogs are crap, although there are a few good ones. So what? That's true of anything, even online columns. Of course, crap is in the eyes of the beholder, and one person's crap is another person's treasure. The column mentioned maternity wear as a topic that interests noone. But if you happen to be in the fashion industry or are perhaps pregnant, the tips could be valuable.

So was the netzwelt article itself crap? I thought it might have been funny, except Germans don't do irony.

He doesn't even like to leave Bavaria

2005-07-16T03:27:33+00:00

Today's Economist print-edition article on German foreign policy (subscribers only): "What many in Berlin dread most is that Edmund Stoiber, boss of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), insists on being foreign minister. That would give him a top post, but let him stand above the political fray: it is easier to be popular as foreign minister than as, say, finance minister. Yet Mr Stoiber would hate the travelling, says one insider: 'He doesn't even like to leave Bavaria.'"

Last Day

2005-07-15T20:57:03+00:00

Yesterday was Christopher's last kindergarten day for the year. It was a bit sad since the two leaders of his clique won't be coming back, and it was also the last day for his favorite Zivi (Zivildienstleistender). Today was the end-of-year fest, and now he has 3-1/2 weeks off. Next year his group will have 8 instead of 9 kids, and the funding for kindergarten will be reduced proportionally (thanks to Christian Wulff's social budget cuts in Niedersachsen... funny how he dropped out of the news after new elections were proposed).

Now Christopher can look forward to flying to see Grandma and Grandpa, and going fishing in Grandpa's boat. Mama and Papa are looking forward to that too.

Wanna Ruin Your Resumé?

2005-07-15T20:22:36+00:00

If you're female, giving birth to a child will ruin your resumé for upper-management jobs.

Not That Starbuck

2005-07-15T13:17:23+00:00

We'll be flying to Minnesota next week and spending two weeks on Lake Minnewaska at my parents' lake house near Starbuck (not to be confused with the coffee shop chain). I just realized that they no longer have a telephone at the lake, since they have a cell phone. And I doubt that Starbuck (without the final s) has WiFi. I guess that means that posting to PapaScott will be fairly light while we are there.

On the other hand, we won't be getting any pesky emails from our respective employers.

What do the conservatives want?

2005-07-11T20:17:00+00:00

Sign and Sight: What do the conservatives want? A look at the tradition of German conservatism. Promising "blooming landscapes" rather than calling for "blood, sweat and tears".

Berlin! Berlin!

2005-07-11T08:50:20+00:00

We spent the weekend (precisely 27 hours, to be exact) in Berlin, finally using that luxury hotel gift certificate that I had received for my birthday. We did a lot of touristy things, but not at real fast pace as we had a 5-year-old in tow. The highlight on Saturday was coffee with Jörg, Gabi and Zebu, followed by a walk through Neukölln, where in the modern city there are still many signs of the old Bohemian village (as well as a couple of nice playgrounds for Christopher). On Sunday morning we queued up to visit the Dome atop the Reichstag building. We had imagined a closed dome that was part of the session hall, but it fact it's a separate open-air structure, and we spent over an hour there enjoying the breeze and the view. We then took a cruise in the sunshine on the Spree river and headed home.

Job Security

2005-07-08T02:00:15+00:00

Chicago Karl: "People here in Germany don't get it. I don't want job security that comes from seniority or because my employer isn't allowed to fire me. I want job security provided by an economy that is dynamic enough so that if I do lose my job, I can just go out and find another one."

1945

2005-07-08T01:27:47+00:00

Susan Kitchens is live blogging the development of the atomic bomb, time-shifted by 60 years.

Change for the Better

2005-07-08T01:04:46+00:00

The good news is: I don't have Diabetes mellitus type 2. The flip side is: I'm well on my way to getting it unless I change my lifestyle, fast.

My sister-in-law is a Heilpraktikerin (alternative practitioner) together with her husband, and I've been helping them with their website Naturheilzentrum Drochtersen. She's started offering a weight-loss program based on optimizing metabolism, and suggested we both start the program together. My Body Mass Index is 35, so I could use such a program quite badly (I'm 174 cm tall, I'll let you do the math).

The first step is a comprehensive blood analysis, so she stopped by a couple weeks ago and took our weights and a dozen vials of blood. Among the blood tests was glucose, and mine was at 129 mg/dl, over the healthy maximum. A big yellow flashing warning signal.

To make sure I didn't really already have diabetes, I went in yesterday for a sugar load test. Drink a cup of sugar water on an empty stomach and check the glucose after 1 and 2 hours. My glucose was way too high after 1 hour, but was OK again after 2 hours. My pancreas is still working, but it's under stress.

I now have a list of about 40 foods I am allowed to eat, all with glycemic indices of 50 or less. I need to eat at least 750 g of vegetables and drink 3.5 l of water per day. I need to plan at least 4 hours between meals, and eat no carbohydrates on an empty stomach. I need to take vitamins and spoonful of linseed oil daily. And I need to exercise. I've invested in a pair of running shoes, and I've started using them.

Since the initial blood test I've lost nearly 2 kg, so it looks like I'm on the right track.

Changeback

2005-07-07T17:38:04+00:00

Sometimes you just have to change things around... (back to Wordpress, in case you're reading in an aggregator). No fear, all your (I mean my) favorite PapaScott non-features and non-design will return... sometime.

2005-07-06T13:25:13+00:00

Mrs. T at AFOE points to a profile of Angela Merkel at Slate that Wahlbloggers in Germany might find interesting. The comparisons to Thatcher are inevitable, and reflect wishful thinking by US conservatives that Merkel is somehow like them (she's not). There are some minor mistakes; for example a Mädchen is no "Lady". And don't get tripped up when it says the CSU is "economically liberal"; that's an Americanism and means the opposite of what you think it does.

Europe Parliament Nixes Software Patent Law

2005-07-06T12:54:17+00:00

AP: Europe Parliament Nixes Software Patent Law. Some good news from Strasbourg for a change.

Really Important

2005-07-06T07:02:07+00:00

Dave Rogers: "Computers were a lot more fun before the internet came along and turned everything into something really important."

Party Platform

2005-07-04T19:38:10+00:00

The Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar." "Alle Menschen sind vor dem Gesetz gleich." "Eigentum verpflichtet." "Politisch Verfolgte genießen Asylrecht."

In case you looking for the words missing in the party platforms, you know where to look. (via Lance Knobel)

(The English translation of German Basic Law doesn't capture the poetry of the original; I've cited Articles 1, 3, 14 and 16a.)

Jackknifed

2005-07-04T05:38:51+00:00

"An auto-transporter has jackknifed in the construction area on the Autobahn A1 between Maschen and Hamburg. The A1 southbound is completely closed, northbound only 1 lane is free. Commuters to Hamburg are advised to completely avoid the A1 and take the A7..." Days like this make me glad I no longer commute.

No Confidence

2005-07-01T17:56:44+00:00

I watched the confidence vote in the Bundestag this morning, hoping to watch a historical event. I haven't watched a government slowly disintegrate since Nixon resigned, and this being Germany the unraveling of the Red/Green coalition is taking place in painfully slow motion. But the debate and the vote were short and disappointing. It was almost like business as usual, and it had the feel of a planned and staged event. Probably because it was, except for Werner Schulz's speech describing the process as the farce that it was.

Chaos Management

2005-06-30T09:05:20+00:00

This week we're painting and laying flooring upstairs or, more correctly, having it done. However, the carpenter is behind, he's only half done, and is flying off on vacation next week. Currently all rooms upstairs are impassable, except (thank God!) the bathroom.

The cleaning lady also comes on Thursday. (Notice how we outsource much of our work.) With the work upstairs today, she can only do the downstairs and the bathroom.

Finally, Christopher woke up today with fever and a cough, so we kept him at home with me. We're staying downstairs with Christopher's Playmobil figures, the carpenter is upstairs, and the cleaning lady is pulling weeds outside. House cleaning is postponed until next week.

Normally one would go to work to escape such chaos, but since I work from home, there is no escape, even if Christopher weren't sick.

The 10 commandments of system administration

2005-06-27T15:51:38+00:00

The 10 commandments of system administration, from NewsForge:
I. Thou shalt make regular and complete backups
II. Thou shalt establish absolute trust in thy servers
III. Thou shalt be the first to know when something goes down
IV. Thou shalt keep server logs on everything
V. Thou shalt document complete and effective policies and procedures
VI. Thou shalt know what cable goes where
VII. Thou shalt use encryption for insecure services
VIII. Thou shalt not lose system logs when a server dies
IX. Thou shalt know the openings into your servers
X. Thou shalt not waste time doing repetitive and mundane tasks

We're still working on full compliance.

Tas Kaf

2005-06-27T12:37:36+00:00

German waiters in Vienna, and they can't serve decent coffee, at least not to Horst.

Mickey D's and Me

2005-06-27T09:42:45+00:00

Interview with Soso Whaley, director of Mickey D's and Me, counterpoint to Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. She lost weight and improved her cholesterol after 30 days of McDonald's. I imagine the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute always stick up for poor defenseless corporations, but the point remains that you can eat stupid anywhere, not just at McDonald's. (via kottke)

Red Jack

2005-06-25T05:35:51+00:00

We can testify from personal experience that the Playmobil web site is a fantastic sales builder. Ever since Christopher discovered the online games, it's even more popular than Super RTL (children's TV channel half-owned by Disney and scourge of responsible German parents). His current favorite is Red Jack, in which you aim a cannonball-riding pirate to land in a rowboat. I think that might be teaching Christopher about geometry and physics, but Mama doubts that a 5-year-old can understand much about angles and acceleration.

Too Many Arrows

2005-06-24T19:24:13+00:00

Joel on Software: "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, on Sony UI design: 'I have a lot of trouble with your remote controls. Too many arrows.'"

Business Lunch

2005-06-23T14:48:08+00:00

Take a Döner, remove the healthy parts (the bread and the salad), keep the meat and sauce, add fries and put into a paper cone. The result is Dönerchips. Don't accept cheap imitations.

The Girls from Ipanema

2005-06-21T18:48:20+00:00

I spent a summer in Brazil as an exchange student, but was only 16 and missed out on some of the finer points. Brazilian women on American men: in short, too shy.

Ask Brazilian women what they think about American men, and most respond precisely the same way: with gales of laughter. Then they tell disturbingly similar tales of men who fear making advances lest they be accused of date rape and who coldly calculate how many days they need to wait between meeting a woman and asking her to dinner...

The women pointed out, American men have other good qualities - their faithfulness, for example. Brazilian women often say that Brazilian men are safados - shameless - and love to chase the fairer sex. Americans actually mean what they say (at least more often than Brazilians do). And they are sweet.

So whom would they rather date?

'Brazilians,' said Ms. Franca.

'Brazilians,' said Ms. Vianna.

'Brazilians,' said Ms. Santos.

Am I Next?

2005-06-20T20:45:10+00:00

Seeing Seth's post about a Washington Post story on Iowa National Guard unit in Iraq, a unit which has had 20% casulties, reminded me that the Guard unit from my hometown has been deployed there as well. I've been gone too long to know any of them, except for a kid I used to babysit (he's now 35, a teacher and father of two). The Economist this week noted that opinion in the US is shifting against the war. I wonder whether the deployment of so many Guard units has something to do with that, citizen soldiers being called away from home.

Travel Plans

2005-06-20T06:38:52+00:00

In case anyone is tracking our movements...

* 9-10 July we'll be in Berlin for our postponed family weekend getaway
* 20 July-3 Aug we'll be in Minnesota visiting family, fishing, relaxing, and maybe catching a couple of ball games
* first week of May 2006 Mama has a conference in Orlando; hopefully we can tack on a couple weeks vacation around that

Including Britain

2005-06-19T07:21:11+00:00

OK, it's an old joke, but given the collapse of the EU budget talks over the British rebate, it's more appropriate than ever that The Economist web site explicitly states that Europe includes Britain.

Your Blog and Your Career

2005-06-18T14:01:57+00:00

Die Welt is a year late and a few Euros short. Just today they report that revealing details about work in your blog can cost you your job. Doh! Revealing them by cellphone or e-mail can be equally dangerous, better stay away from them too! Fortunately my boss Nico doesn't feel that way. We don't have a formal blogging policy, but as long as I don't openly criticize his Döner pictures, I think I'm OK.

Blackberry

2005-06-16T10:12:08+00:00

I am important. I now have a Blackberry 7230.

Actually, it's a hand-me-down, so I'm actually not all that important. (No, it is not Nico's famous Blackberry with wings.)

At least I now have cell reception at home (Vodafone instead of E-Plus), which is convenient. This is the "No Messages" screen. My favorite command is "Delete Prior" which, if done correctly, actually deletes all.

blo.gs has been acquired by yahoo!

2005-06-14T21:35:49+00:00

blo.gs has been acquired by yahoo! Note the favicon. Well, that's cool.

Terminal Panic

2005-06-14T20:12:46+00:00

The airport Fühlsbüttel in Hamburg used to have Terminals 1 (charter), 2 and 3. Then they built a new Terminal 4. The ancient Terminal 2 was torn down to build a second new terminal. The entire airport was renamed Hamburg Airport. Terminal 3 was then closed to be rebuilt into a shopping center. Last month the new terminal on the site of Terminal 2 was named Terminal 1, the old Terminal 1 was closed, and Terminal 4 was renamed Terminal 2.

So, from which terminal does tomorrow's 9:55 flight to Munich take off?

Oral Exams

2005-06-13T19:26:20+00:00

Almost exactly a year ago Christopher met with the state speech expert to be approved for his speech therapy kindergarten for one year. Today was the follow-up meeting to be approved for an additional six months. While we had been assured by the kindergarten that an extension would be no problem, since the extension would be mostly based on their written report, we were nonetheless nervous.

We needn't have worried. While he has made excellent progress the past year, his stutter is still very pronounced, especially in stress situations. However, he's smart, outgoing and self-confident, and he usually does not become flustered by his stutter, but just keeps on talking. Self-confidence is 90% of the battle. The expert approved the extension, and was already giving us advice for school next year, recommending a regular 1st grade class (with therapy on the side) rather than a special ed group, specifically because Christopher is so sure of himself.

While waiting along with us, one of the mothers told us this was just like waiting for oral exams for the Abitur. That didn't seem that far from the truth.

We're A Happy Family

2005-06-12T20:01:41+00:00

The German Blogosphere is all a twitter about the new weblog network Spreeblick Verlag KG founded this weekend, with weblogs concentrating on music, games, poltics, culture, and broadcasting, with even a mention in tomorrows Focus magazine (as in dead-tree glossy paper). Does this mean that weblogs are selling out? No, I think that progress is good, and that any organization with a tag line from the Ramones must be off to a good start. Now we just need a second German weblog network, so we can have catfights just like Calcanis and Denton.

A Rose From Christopher

2005-06-12T05:36:56+00:00

This year I thought I had the problem of Mama's birthday present licked. I'd let Christopher take care of it! I had asked him early in the week what we should get, and he immediately answered "A rose". The perfect answer, since Mama loves her garden and she would love any present that came from Christopher.

However, when it came time to go to the garden shop on Thursday to pick one out, Christopher participated only unwillingly (he was sulking because I wouldn't let him play on the Playmobil web site until after supper). However, with the promise of an ice cream bar, he did come along and immediately picked out a classical Jubilee du Prince de Monaco rose bush. However, that didn't end his sulk. I hid the rose in our back yard and waited for Mama's birthday on Saturday.

On Saturday morning, it was wet and windy outside and Christopher couldn't be dragged away from his knight and dragon playthings. I had hoped that we would give Mama her rose together, but he just blurted out "Happy Birthday" and headed back to his room. I was left alone to head out in the rain to get the rose and explain to Mama the story. She seemed to enjoy it, but it wasn't quite the effect I had hoped for.

Meanwhile today we have the family birthday (Mama and two nephews) celebration. We were planning an American-style barbecue, however we have a streak of attracting rain showers every time we plan to barbecue. So instead of cooking on the patio we will be shivering in the carport. Again.

'Grandpa Gang' bank robbers jailed

2005-06-10T19:02:23+00:00

CNN.com - 'Grandpa Gang' bank robbers jailed. Nice to see CNN covering the really important German news. Good thing there's no Michael Jackson verdict yet today...

Where the US comes up short

2005-06-09T18:51:27+00:00

Davos Newbies: Where the US comes up short "In so many ways, American life is very easy (for those of us fortunate enough to have jobs and money). Things work smoothly and technology is generally advanced. That's to be expected in the richest nation on earth. What's not expected is the number of areas where US technology compares woefully to poor, benighted Britain: the structure of mobile telephony, the comparative underdevelopment of digital television, the absence of digital radio and congestion charging are the four things that spring immediately to mind."

Why Not Us?

2005-06-09T18:22:40+00:00

Red Sox play in Wrigley Field for first time since 1918

In the middle of the sixth inning Tuesday night... the (black) cat bolted from its underground quarters, crossed in front of the Cubs' dugout and leapt into the third-base box seats before security guards could corral it... Cubs Manager Dusty Baker discounted the significance of the appearance of the black cat Tuesday night because it had white paws...</p>

This is almost as weird as current German politics. Maybe Schröder should start releasing black cats from the Kanzleramt.

Turning Germany into Delaware

2005-06-09T16:17:22+00:00

.de domains for Delaware. Really? Well, no, actually not.

McDonald's Europe Names New President

2005-06-07T17:57:40+00:00

McDonald's Corp. Appoints Denis Hennequin As President of Its Europe Operations For the first time, a European is in charge of McDonald's Europe

Our Tagesmutter on TV

2005-06-05T18:06:15+00:00

Christopher's former "day care mother" Heidi was featured today (along with Family Minister Renate Schmidt) on German TV in a story about home day care in ZDFfor the Mona Lisa program. Even if you can't read German, her picture in the sandbox leads the story on the web page.

Unfortunately the story was rather sensationalist, how a unregulated Tagesmutter in Munich used sleeping pills to control the toddlers in her care. Heidi was presented as what a Tagesmutter should be, as well a spokesperson for her professional organization. The film team spent several hours with her, so maybe they will use the material for a future report. Today she was shown for one minute, at the most.

The story, however, ended on a sexist note, as the reporter noted how many working women depend on Tagesmütter... as if fathers had no interest in day care at all.

I Love Berlin

2005-06-04T05:49:41+00:00

Maybe if I get in early, I can also get out early...

Experience Not Required

2005-06-01T22:35:04+00:00

One interesting thing about Angela Merkel, newly annointed CDU/CSU Chancellor candidate, that I haven't seen anyone mention is that she's never before been actually elected to anything. I don't mean her seat in the Bundestag, I mean to an office where she actually leads a campaign and runs a government, for instance as a mayor or state premier. Leading German politicians have generally cut their teeth at the state level. In fact, I couldn't think of German chancellor candidate who didn't have such experience... I had to turn to Wikipedia.

My first guess was Hans-Jochen Vogel in 1983, but I was wrong. I knew he had been mayor of Munich, but he was also mayor of Berlin... only for 6 months, but Berlin is a state so that counts. The last chancellor candidate without any experience running a state was Rainer Barzel, who lost to Willy Brandt in 1972. The only German Chancellor who, like Merkel, had never been mayor or state premier was
Ludwig Erhard, not a particularly good Chancellor who lasted just 3 years.

Merkel has done well leading the CDU, taming Stoiber and Koch, but does she actually have the experience to run an election and lead a country?

Wishful Thinking

2005-05-29T19:36:47+00:00

The polls haven't yet closed in France for the referendum on the EU Constitution, but Spiegel Online says High Turnout in France and that while the opponents had been leading the polls, the lead has "melted away".

Given Spiegel's record on citing polls in the last two German state elections, I take it that means the constitution will decisively lose. I've decided that's probably a good thing. Europe needs to catch its breath.

Update 22:04: Told you so!

Harbor Tour

2005-05-29T19:11:38+00:00

We spent a couple of nice hours this sunny afternoon with Anna, who was in Hamburg for the weekend. Christopher enjoyed showing her the harbor on the Louisiana Star (which Christopher has ridden before), and the old Elbe tunnel. Anna's leaving Germany in a month for her fiancé in Texas, so she's doing a lot of sightseeing in the few weeks before she leaves.

I realized after we parted ways that we didn't take any pictures of one another, so you'll just have to take our words for it that we had a good time. We still have no idea, though, why there is a Southern-style riverboat in Germany.

Planned Shutdown

2005-05-28T12:40:16+00:00

What's worse than the office building management planning a power shutdown from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm on Saturday (and you have vital systems in the building that need to be restarted)?

It's when on Thursday the building management decides to change the shutdown to 5:00 to 7:00 pm, and it's perfect grill weather.

At least I don't have to drive in, since my boss bravely volunteered to turned things back on. I just have to make sure everything works. But I'd rather be grilling.

Update: Power was restored 2 hours later than promised, throroughly ruining our evenings. Of course the machines didn't come right up, Nico had to reset the router. One machine still doesn't have power... that has to wait until Monday. Oh joy.

Hot Wheels Gorleben

2005-05-28T10:17:07+00:00

You let Mama and Christopher go shopping alone, and you never know what they'll come home with. Today it was a Hot Wheels Atomic Waste Processing Plant. At least that's what it looks like.

When Exceptions Become the Norm

2005-05-27T07:30:21+00:00

What Is Torture? is an excellent interactive "primer on American interrogation" at Slate that explains the debate about interrogation techniques used by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. It presents a lot of detail without being overwhelming. It's intended to "inform rather than persuade", but it's hard to disagree with the conclusion:

What has happened — a slow slide from coherent, consistent standards for interrogation and treatment of prisoners to a sometimes ad-hoc, occasionally brutal search for information at all costs — should warrant public outcry. That it has not suggests either that this shift doesn't interest us because it affects outsiders, or that we no longer consider torture or near-torture to be beyond the bounds of civil conduct.

(via Queso)

Working for the Clampdown

2005-05-25T20:19:15+00:00

Thorte's post on the new elections reminded me of the fact that if we were playing six degrees of separation with German politicians, I'd be closest to Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein, the most right-wing politician holding high office in Germany. That might be enough to save my butt when the clampdown comes, but I doubt if I'd be able to help anyone else.

You say you want a revolution

2005-05-23T20:43:40+00:00

powerbook_blog, who normally blogs almost exclusively about his (surprise) Powerbook, makes the observation that the NRW elections and Schröder's decision to call new elections could be the best thing to ever happen to the German blogosphere. I paraphrase: "In my 1 year blogging career I've never seen so many political blog postings. I would find it almost revolutionary if this would continue. It would be fantistic if we could get a little bit away from our we-can't-do-anything-about-it-anyway mentality and blog a little bit about politics."

What, a revolution? In Germany? Nah, it will never happen...

Live Journal Exchange

2005-05-23T05:40:18+00:00

Live Journal exchange on new elections "This is the most sucky government we ever had", "But they also had to deal with all the shit 16 years of fat guy brought us"

SPD Loses Big in NRW

2005-05-22T17:36:12+00:00

SPD loses big in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schröder said to seek early Bundestag elections this fall.

So what was this "razor close race" the polls this week were supposedly reporting?

Germany: No Points

2005-05-21T20:33:30+00:00

It's 10:30, have they started the announcing the votes at the Eurovision Song Contest yet? I'm not turning on the TV until I'm sure the music is over. I only want to watch the results.

Update 0:26: That title wasn't a prediction. I had no idea Germany would really finish dead last. However, I did enjoy the Ukrainian Pat Sajak clone moderator.

SPD, tut nicht weh

2005-05-20T09:59:20+00:00

The best comment I've heard on Sunday's election in NRW is the fake radio spot in today's Bundestagkantine (MP3, 2.2MB, link will probably disappear tomorrow) in the style of Sendung mit der Maus. "Steenbruck is already Minister-President, he knows he can't do it; the dumb Rüttgers would need to learn that for himself." Or something like that.

Pfingstbaum

2005-05-18T16:42:57+00:00

Karl talked about Pfingstbaumpflanzen, or planting trees for Pentecost. In his village the young men bring trees to the young women, drinking Schnapps along the way. Here the young men bring trees to every house, and sing in exchange for schnapps. This year they came to us quite late, after 9 pm, and were by then quite woozey. I was afraid we'd have to have to call a street sweeper (but we did finish off a bottle of dogrose schnapps we'd had open for a while).

I've mentioned (and shown) before how here on Pentecost Sunday the children come and sings (boys and girls separately) in exhange for candy or money. They start when the kids are in school, so Christopher has to wait a couple of years yet.

These traditions for Pentecost seem to be dying out, since none of the other towns in our area do anything at all. (Grandparents might prefer this picture which shows less tree and more Christopher.)

2005-05-18T07:07:45+00:00

ChicagoKarl points out an article at FAZ that tries to explain in English the German concept of a Spießer, which can't really be explained. LEO says it's "bourgeois" or "square", but that doesn't really cut it. It's more of a middle-class, middle-aged conformist. You could also say suburban, except Germany doesn't have suburbs.

My personal definition is "that what we once ridiculed, but what we have now become", which I usually think of when I'm mowing the lawn, even though I'm allergic to grass clippings and don't really care how the lawn looks.

Stick Figures in Peril

2005-05-17T09:24:52+00:00

Stick Figures in Peril

Nazi Spam

2005-05-15T21:12:23+00:00

After a frustrating week, I was going to completely ignore work this weekend, but today's return of the zombie Nazi spambots demanded attention. Many Germans are understandably disturbed by neo-Nazi mails sent by the latest variant of the Sober virus. Users who don't bat an eye at porn, drug or gambling spam are bothered by these mails, which apparently are related to the election in Nordrhein-Westfalen next Sunday (the wave of Nazi spam last summer was a week before the European Parliament elections).

One of our domains is apparently misconfiured, so mails to non-existent addresses is sent to postmaster (i.e. me) instead of being bounced. So I quickly acquired several hundred examples of the latest Nazi spam in my inbox. After finding 26 "Subject:" lines on my own, I found the same ones in a list of spamassassin rules for Nazi spam, plus 4 subjects in English that I hadn't seen. If you have postfix, you can filter Nazi spam with header_checks, which is even better.

Who is Germany?

2005-05-10T21:00:03+00:00

An ad campaign is to declare You are Germany. Spreeblick says Not me. Moe says Me neither. Nico says It's morning in Germany. Heiko says I'd rather be pope.

Who is Germany, if not the Germans?

WordPress Export Plugin

2005-05-10T06:42:32+00:00

A lot of people seem to be using my Export from WordPress script. Since I'm not using WordPress right now, I haven't been maintaining the script. A better alternative might be the WPexport plugin by Eric Pierce, since, unlike me, he regularly exports WordPress blogs (for students at the University of South Florida).

Determination

2005-05-08T20:02:20+00:00

We didn't intend to celebrate my mother-in-law's 75th birthday on Mother's Days and the anniversary of VE Day. It just happened that way. As a surprise for her, we scanned in some of her old pictures and made a presentation. This picture is my favorite, and seems appropriate for all 3 occasions.

This is her confirmation picture at age 14, spring 1944. A year later her way of life would be destroyed: the war would be lost, her family would lose their house and mill (east of Frankfurt-Oder) and be expelled, and she would leave her family and flee alone to an uncle in bombed-out Hamburg rather than remain as a teenage girl among Russian occupiers.

This picture shows the strength and determination that got her through and enabled her to start her life anew after losing everything. I've never heard her talk with remorse or regret about all that she and her family lost with the war. Her old life was gone, and wishing it would come back would not make the present day any better. Was the end of the war a defeat or a liberation? I think she would say it was both, but more importantly it was a new beginning. She raised a very impressive family, a family which I'm very proud and happy to have married into.

Today she mentioned that the picture was in fact taken in Poland. All nearby German photographers had been called into the military, so her class travelled as a group across to border to a Polish photographer.

Co-Host

2005-05-08T07:48:32+00:00

We're co-hosting Oma's 75th birthday celebration today. That means most of yesterday and all of today is pretty much shot.

Paris Hilton On Blogs

2005-05-06T12:06:55+00:00

Paris Hilton on blogs: "I don't really read anything on the Internet except my AOL mail. I don't like people who sit on computers all day long and write about people they don't know anything about." (via Anke Gröner)

Locked In

2005-05-06T07:44:19+00:00

Holiday weekends like Ascension are great for sysadmins. We can try out system changes without bothering anyone's work, and if something breaks we have a couple of days to get things going again. So I took the opportunity yesterday to update a system, and of course it didn't come back up. We don't have any serial consoles set up yet, so I drove in to see what had gone wrong.

Our provider is located in an industrial part of Hamburg. They have a parking lot in back, but it's locked up outside of office hours. So I parked on the street, poked the system to get it back up, and went out the back door to drive back home.

As the door locked behind me, I realized that it was the wrong door. I was locked in the parking lot, a very well walled and gated parking lot. There was no way out.

There were short stretches where there was no wall, but a 3.5 m grated metal fence, with grates at the top slanted to the outside to discourage climbing. One stretch along the back was along a canal (fact: Hamburg has more canals than either Venice or Amsterdam), so I would have landed in the water. The other stretch was along the neighboring lot, with a potential landing on concrete. Not being particularly athletic, I wasn't sure whether I would be able to control my landing.

Before risking my bones and ankles, I decided to make one more round and check all the doors leading out. Luckily, I found an unlocked door to another lobby, and was able to escape to freedom without breaking bones or setting off alarms. But 20 minutes of being locked in a parking lot was enough excitement for one day, and was a career risk of being a sysadmin that I had never before considered.

Mixing Tiger and m0n0wall

2005-05-06T06:20:01+00:00

I don't really depend on my Powerbook for work, since I can get a browser and an ssh window in just about any operating system, so I was adventurous and installed Tiger when it arrived last weekend. Quick review: everything seems faster, Spotlight is weird, Dashboard is lame.

But I've run into an obscure and annoying bug. At work we run m0n0wall, a tiny firewall based on FreeBSD (and which I can heartily recommend). The only access is via a web front-end (mini\_httpd with php). I found that accessing the m0n0wall with Firefox under Tiger causes the mini\_httpd in m0n0wall to crash. The firewall is still running, you just can't view or change settings. It took me 3 or 4 crashes to associate them with Tiger, but then I was able to reproduce the behavior, and it was confirmed by another member of the mailing list.

mini\_httpd might be sensitive; there was a previous bug reported involving crashes on m0n0wall. And Tiger seems to have some networking issues. But for now you'll want to avoid accessing m0n0wall with Firefox under Tiger, and if you administer a remote m0n0wall you might want to consider the modified m0n0wall image with ssh so you can restart mini_httpd without physically rebooting.

Did You Mean Mother's Day?

2005-05-05T19:56:17+00:00

Today is Ascension, which in Germany is Father's Day (Vatertag). Dave has some observations on the German tradition of over-indulging on the day devoted to German fathers. Yes, they really do go for walks pulling wooden wagons filled with alcoholic beverages. By the afternoon they usually look pretty beat up.

I did see one group pulling a wagon this afternoon that looked very fit, even at 5 pm. They were all women. An Antifa demonstration perhaps (as in anti-father instead of anti-fascist)?

The ultimate insult for fathers is delivered by searching google.de for Vatertag. "Did you mean Muttertag? (Mother's Day)"

The Conversation Has Just Ended

2005-05-04T07:32:11+00:00

Like Tobias, I wish that Godwin's Law (that any discussion should be ended once anything is compared to Hitler or the Nazis) would be enforced more strictly in German politics, and in weblogs about Germany as well. (Although strict enforcement in Great Britain would probably shut down the entire tabloid press... which may not be such a bad thing.)

Bargaining with the Tooth Fairy

2005-05-03T20:17:51+00:00

We have the feeling Christopher is going to be a union negotiator when he grows up. He always tries to get as much as he can, and then just a little bit more. Can I habe a cookie? Two cookies? Five? Every time you draw a line in the sand, he tries to step over it.

He's now trying the same tactic with the tooth fairy. Yes, we tried to tell him that there is no tooth fairy in Germany, but one of his friends told him about it. So last night he took his tooth box to bed in hopes of getting a present from the tooth fairy. Alas, neither of the fairy's assistants noticed, so he woke up very disappointed. So tonight the assistants are ready.

But of course, Christopher wants to have his tooth and eat it too, so to speak. He doesn't want the tooth fairy to take his tooth... he just wants the money! We tried to explain that's not how the tooth fairy usually works, but he insisted... so we said that maybe if we leave a note for the tooth fairy to not take the tooth away, he might be able to keep it and still get a present.

Knowing Christopher, the tooth fairy had better insist on a receipt, otherwise he'll probably keep trying to cash in using the same tooth.

Happy Birthday Dave

2005-05-02T18:21:10+00:00

Dave Winer turns 50 wants us to push up his Technorati rank as a birthday present. No problem, Dave. Happy birthday, and enjoy your new decade. And remember that little baby you met in Amsterdam a few years ago? He's now 5 and just lost his first tooth yesterday. So we are all getting older.

Whatever you think of Dave's tone, I've found him to be right more often than not. And it was because of Frontier, Scripting News and EditThisPage.com that I got into web scripting and weblogging, and thanks to that I have the career I have today.

Toothy Grin

2005-05-01T10:06:15+00:00

Christopher lost his first tooth this morning. He was a bit frightened at first, but some ice cream took care of that. In Germany, by the way, you save your baby teeth in a little box (Zahndose) instead of selling them to the tooth fairy.

Chain Saw Bush

2005-05-01T07:58:02+00:00

First Lady Laura Bush: "George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chainsaw. Which I think is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well."

Multilateral Lasagne

2005-04-30T19:43:35+00:00

A few years ago a certain brand of lasagne noodles had a package in 12 languages, including the recipe for (wouldn't you know it) lasagne. The French recipe was very general; there were no measurements, just make a batch of Bechamel sauce, then a batch of red meat sauce, etc. The German version was somewhat longer and gave exact instructions: 750 ml milk, 50 g flour, 50 g butter for the Bechamel, and so on.

The English instructions were more to the point: take one can of Bechamel sauce, one can of meat sauce...

Alas, the German version became our favorite lasagne recipe, but they've stopped putting it on the package. We (or at least I) keep forgetting the proportions for the Bechamel sauce. Tonight we got it right, so I'm posting this to make sure we can always find it.

Lost Passport

2005-04-30T07:22:59+00:00

In Actual Fact has a good lost passport story. I'd have a good one too, from a few years ago, but I didn't know it was lost. A couple days after returning from a trip to the States, I couldn't locate my passport. It couldn't be that far away, I obviously had it in my hand when I entered the country. I assumed I had misplaced it when unpacking, and that it would eventually show up.

After a couple of weeks, it hadn't shown up, and I submitted an application for a replacement to the consulate. They called me to say that they had my old passport, so I wouldn't need a new one. Someone had found it at the airport parking lot and had put in a mailbox, and the post sent it to the consulate. Which goes to show that sometimes when something is missing, maybe you really have lost it.

Impact Blog

2005-04-29T06:06:50+00:00

Jörg earnestly asks "What is an 'impact blog'?" To me it's obvious... it's a blog that makes a big hole. Experience the impact!

You Don't Want to Need to Know

2005-04-27T20:30:40+00:00

You don't really want to need to know how to recover from mysql crashes, be they the result of natural or man-made disasters. It's good to know that you can, but it's better to avoid the disasters in the first place. You'd rather not have to find the previous snapshot, convert the subsequent bin logs to SQL, edit a 200 MB file to delete the bad SQL statements, pipe those commands to the mysql client to update the snapshot, re-edit the SQL every time it gets stuck on a temporary table, and hope that everything turns out OK.

The chances are good that everything will turn out OK, but you really don't want to have to find out.

accidents waiting to happen

2005-04-27T15:08:01+00:00

"Both the raft and the PR manager were accidents waiting to happen..."

sigh

2005-04-25T19:55:10+00:00

When talking about childhood with Germans, one of the differences one discovers is that they all grew up reading Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic books, and we didn't. We Americans outgrew Mickey and Donald by the time we were 6, but the Germans... they kept reading, even into adulthood, and even now ask for the English word for Entenhausen, the town where Donald and Co. live. (What, it has a name?) My wife still talks today about smuggling Mickey Mouse comics to her cousins in East Berlin.

Apparently, a big reason for the German fans was the German translator Erika Fuchs, who lent the mouse and the duck a literary tongue not found in the original and who helped invent a grammatical form named after her, the Erikativ, using a verb to express an action in a comic, as in *sigh*, a precursor of emoticons used today in chat and SMS.

Erika Fuchs died this week aged 98. I'm too old to start reading comic books, so I guess I'll never catch on. (via beissholz and swr)

Music Charts

2005-04-25T12:53:49+00:00

Noticed looking at the CD charts at the music store today: Of the top 10 albums in Germany, 7 are by German artists, including 5 of the top 6. The only US album is 50 Cent at number 7. Of the top 10 albums in the US, only 4 appear in the German Top 50 at all (2 in the high 40s, just barely making it). So I guess German music really is making a comeback.

Methamphetamine wreckage in Montana

2005-04-23T19:29:36+00:00

New West has a bizarre 6 part story of prostitution and methamphetamines in rural Montana. I've heard of meth labs near my old home town in Minnesota, but meth is a rural phenomenon that began after I left, so the disruption and destruction that meth addiction can cause in small towns was new to me, especially when the economy is failing. In this particular story a local businessman is taking advantage of young women who need money for the drug. After a woman is killed in a car accident, her mother had the courage to gather evidence and go to the police. (via Mark A. R. Kleiman)

Paris Later

2005-04-23T16:10:21+00:00

Since Christopher will be on the North Sea for his Kindergarten Freetime this week, I could very well have arranged to attend the Les Blogs (that's Les as in French, not Les as in lesbian) conference in Paris on Monday. But since we've never been to Paris, it would be somehow unfair to go to Paris without my wife, wouldn't it? (Although the first vision I have of going to Paris with my wife is losing her like in Frantic... would I go jumping on roofs like Harrison Ford to look for her? Let's hope I never have to find out!)

Anyway, I suspect our first trip to Paris will not be a romantic second honeymoon, but rather a visit with Christopher to see the mouse at Disneyland Paris.

Rent A German

2005-04-23T07:39:41+00:00

I don't really need to Rent A German. I've already got one on long-term lease.

airport penguins

2005-04-23T07:22:14+00:00

Two penguins going through airport security. (via Schneier on Security)

Welcome to Squeezebox

2005-04-22T09:06:03+00:00

This is my latest enhancement for my home workspace... a Squeezebox wireless digital music player for mp3s and Internet radio for our existing stereo, controlled via remote or a web browser.

The files stored on my NSLU2 running Unslung. The SlimServer (open-source, in Perl) is probably too hefty to run on Unslung; I've got it on a FreeBSD box which mounts the NSLU2 via NFS. The SlimServer can stream to software players as well as the Squeezebox and can serve several devices simultaneously. It seems much easier than having iTunes libraries on each PC.

I was made aware of the Squeezebox by a post by Tim Bray a few weeks ago. Unlike him, we're no audiophiles... our existing setup is a 15-year-old mini stereo, but we can move the Squeezebox to whatever system we may upgrade to. It's not cheap at $300 (plus postage and customs), but seems to be much more convenient than the stacks of CDs we have accumulated. My initial impression is very positive, and even Mama the Technophobe agrees that it might be a nice thing to have.

One warning... the Slim Devices order page said the unit would be shipped in 5 to 7 days. That must be a typo, they must mean hours instead of days. My order was shipped the same day, and arrived from California within 48 hours of my order.

Understatement

2005-04-22T04:32:00+00:00

In How to Start a Startup Paul Graham explains that formalities aren't so important when starting a company, except: "A friend who started a company in Germany told me they do care about the paperwork there, and that there's more of it. Which helps explain why there are not more startups in Germany." (via vowe)

The End

2005-04-20T19:20:01+00:00

My former employer Netlife is to be liquidated. Guess I can toss out my stock options now...

Darth Benedict

2005-04-20T05:31:49+00:00

Living on the northern Protestant end of a country long divided by the 30 Years' War, the election of the Pope, even a German Pope, is news that seems very far away. They do put on a good show and tell a good story, but as an outsider the Catholic church (without meaning to insult my Catholic friends) seems be a schizophrenic death cult. On the other hand, I wasn't born Catholic, and if I were, I have no idea whether I would reject the church or accept and try to live with it.

At any rate, the German TV coverage of the election of Pope Benedict XVI didn't enlighten me much (except that the previous "German" Pope Hadrian VI was really Dutch). Cardinal Ratzinger has been in Rome for over 20 years, so he's not really in touch with the German church or the German people. His pronouncements on abortion (as Germany was rewriting its abortion laws a few years ago) and homosexuality seem to come from a different planet.

It's interesting that English-language commentators are mentioning his membership in the Hitler Youth. I don't think anyone who did not live as a teenager in a wartime dictatorship is in any position to judge whether that was right or wrong.

Double Feature

2005-04-19T05:22:25+00:00

As fate would have it, yesterday Amango (like Netflix, only German) sent me 2 DVDs I've been waiting a long to see:

* Die Unglaublichen - The Incredibles
* Der Untergang - The Downfall

Now, if that's not a double feature... fun for the whole family! Pixar in the Bunker!

Bloglines Down

2005-04-16T08:55:11+00:00

I can't log in to my Bloglines accounts this morning... and it seems like noone else can either.

Of course, if you depend on Bloglines to manage your reading, you'll never read this.

Update: As of 16:15 CET, it seems to be back.

Sixty Years After Bergen-Belsen

2005-04-15T20:00:36+00:00

David's Medienkritik reminded me that this is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, located about 50 km from our house. I've mentioned before that Bergen-Belsen is perhaps the eeriest place I've ever been. There are no original buildings from the camp. They were all burned, and there are no replicas. There is a small museum, and various memorials, but most of the grounds consist of heather-covered mounds. Dozens of mounds. Each is a mass grave representing thousands of dead. The stillness is overwhelming.

29560 Unread

2005-04-14T08:50:53+00:00

I really should check my spam folder more often than every six months...

Blue Train

2005-04-11T20:01:10+00:00

That's Mama, Papa and Christopher riding there in the back. I'm not sure about the 4th circle.

Service with a Smile

2005-04-09T16:34:02+00:00

To anyone following the company, it's old news that Wal-Mart is struggling In Germany. But a side comment is interesting. "Rivals continue to chuckle about the customer reaction when, initially, Wal-Mart offered services such as grocery bagging. It turned out that Germans didn't want strangers handling their groceries. And when clerks followed orders to smile at shoppers, male customers took it as a come-on." (via Ministry of Propaganda)

Streetcar

2005-04-09T11:23:47+00:00

We were in Braunschweig yesterday as first leg of our (ill-fated) Berlin trip. Christopher was impressed by the streetcars. Click for an enlargement.

(This is a negative of his drawing, since his yellow outline is very hard to see on the white paper. So call this a streetcar at night.)

Berlin Postponed

2005-04-09T06:24:45+00:00

We have to postpone our Berlin weekend. We both have a case of stomach flu, and decided it would be best to wait until we, and the weather, were somewhat better.

That means we won't be able to meet Jörg and Gabi as we had planned. Hopefully we can arrange a meeting next time.

All Pope, All The Time

2005-04-07T14:24:43+00:00

Just trying to cash in on the media craze... PapalScott!

Update: I got tired of the design after about 5 minutes, so the screenshot will have to do. I still think the photo (from Spiegel Online) with the papal light sabre is cool, though.

Bruce Springsteen in Hamburg

2005-04-07T12:55:44+00:00

Ringfahndung Blog: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN 5 solo concerts in Germany Hamburg, 11 June, Color Line Arena. Also Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf

Practice for Freetime

2005-04-06T19:36:47+00:00

Tomorrow Christopher's Kindergarten group will be staying there overnight. It's a warm-up for their trip at the end of April, what they call Freizeit, or Freetime, when the group will spend a week at St. Peter Ording on the North Sea.

That's right, in 3 weeks Christopher will be away from home for 5 days.

We weren't sure what to think when we first heard the idea. Four- and five-year-olds, away from home for a week? Isn't that a bit young to be away from one's parents for so long?

But that's exactly the point, to give the kids a sense a sense of accomplishment, to present this with a real problem, a difficult task, and all the tools they need solve it. These are all kids with real handicaps or problems of one sort or another, and self-confidence is a vital ingredient to help them deal with them.

Anyway, tomorrow is the warm-up. They go swimming in the afternoon, go out to eat in the evening (Christopher is ordering fish sticks), and return to their classroom to sleep. We parents are supposed to bring them breakfast the next morning (we are to bring sliced cheese), then bring the kids home since experience shows that they will be too excited (and too tired) for kindergarten that day.

So what are we going to do without Christopher tomorrow evening?

Priority clash

2005-04-06T10:54:20+00:00

Asymmetrical Information: "Old Europe's" welfare states will undermine European integration (Martin Wolf in today's Financial Times):

Hourly labour costs in the present wave of accession countries were, on average, one-seventh of the west German level in 2003... The incentive for migration then is huge, as is that for moving production in the opposite direction...

However, such migration is economically useless: it reduces output in the country of origin and lowers it in the recipient. Only if countries have flexible labour markets can migration be beneficial. Israel, the US and today's UK come to mind. Germany is in the opposite category.

I particularly liked the phrase "nationals who are indifferent between work and state support".

Berlin for Children

2005-04-05T17:15:32+00:00

We'll be taking a quick trip to Berlin for the weekend... hopefully the good weather will hold up. We'll get a U-Bahn pass and check out some of the tours for children.

Switzerland has moved

2005-04-05T10:10:08+00:00

Switzerland has moved according to Microsoft

Microsoft Mac OS X

2005-04-05T10:01:25+00:00

MacMini with Microsoft Mac OS X at Media Markt

Stomach Flu

2005-04-04T06:26:50+00:00

Every so often the kindergarten sends a slip home telling us that some sickness is making the rounds. Chicken pox, measles, ringworm, flu; anything that kids can get, it's on the list.

Now for the first time, Christopher brought the disease home along with the checklist. He's sick with stomach flu. Probably only a one-day affair, but I was supposed to meet the Telekom at our ISP this morning. Hopefully my colleague didn't mind too much the wake-up call to fill in for me.

Cat Content

2005-04-03T15:07:14+00:00

In this case, the cat is content in the bird feeder.

It's Nice To Be Noticed

2005-03-31T18:36:33+00:00

It's great to make a mistake at work, and then later read in my RSS reader that someone noticed that I screwed up. Yes, blogg.de was down for half an hour. When my boss starts blogging about my screw ups too, then I'll know I'm really in trouble.

For the record, when you add an alias to a network interface and then <a title="Making a Virtual Alias show up with "ifconfig"" href="http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2005/02/dcon_alias_labels.html">all of your aliases disappear from ifconfig, you shouldn't panic and assume that you've destroyed your network configuration. If you do panic, you might do something stupid, and then you will really need to drive to your ISP and restart your server.

The Man Who Saved the World

2005-03-31T17:51:00+00:00

Moscow News: The Man Who Saved the World Finally Recognized In 1983 he was supposed to push the button. But didn't. (Anil Dash)

Two New Old Expat Blogs

2005-03-31T17:09:56+00:00

In Actual Fact is "about an Englishman living in Germany" who used to blog under his real name. He's now hiding his identity about as effectively as Christopher plays hide-and-seek (hiding under a bedsheet and giggling uncontrollably).

chicagokarl writes about "life in a German farming hamlet" Addrup in Lower Saxony. His blog reappears after a 2 year hiatus.

TerriGate

2005-03-30T12:03:07+00:00

A persistent vegetative state is no obstacle to blogging. Thousands prove it every day.

BBEdit 8.1 adds Subversion support

2005-03-29T02:49:09+00:00

BBEdit 8.1 adds Subversion support (Ranchero)

The Totals On The Board Are Correct

2005-03-28T20:30:09+00:00

Anyone who ever saw a Twins baseball game in Minnesota would recognize the voice of Bob Casey, the Twins PA announcer since before I was born, who turned a no smoking announcement into a work of art, and bellowed the name of every player, home or visitor, as if he were a superstar (even if he got some of the names wrong). He died on Saturday at age 79.

"The totals on the board are correct" is what he said immediately after the final out, even when they weren't. It's hard to imagine what a Twins game will be like without him. (Dave's Picks)

Ein Bier für Hartz IV

2005-03-28T11:09:54+00:00

I'm not sure how well this is known outside Germany, but the number one beer sold in Germany is no longer a national premium brand like Warsteiner, Bitburger or Krombacher, but the discount brand Oettinger. Spiegel Online calls it Ein Bier für Hartz IV, after Schröder's social reform package, since Oettinger usually sells at half the price of national brands. They cut costs by not advertising, selling only in stores (no bars or restaurants), and distributing themselves instead of through wholesalers. Interestingly, it's not sold at discount chains like Aldi... the profit margin there is too low.

greenpeace.spiegel.de

2005-03-28T07:16:10+00:00

Wortfeld on greenpeace.spiegel.de:

What is the cooperation with Greenpeace supposed to mean for Spiegel Online? It's under the category Politics, within the website navigation and in the regular design, but in the text and appeals "we" always stands for Greenpeace. Rhetorical question: would the printed edition do this?

Everybody Loves Anil

2005-03-28T06:45:26+00:00

Everybody Loves Anil! I bet you'd look great in his clothes.

Lack of Testing

2005-03-28T06:38:36+00:00

Hack the Planet on Autopackage:

I'm not sold on the Autopackage system, but I agree with their analysis of the problems with kitchen-sink Linux distributions and extreme software modularity.
One issue that is not mentioned is that Autopackage encourages
installation of untested configurations; this is not too surprising
given that everybody else does, too, and the open source world has
largely abandoned testing anyway.

Otto fand ich gut

2005-03-27T19:04:55+00:00

German mail-order and online merchant Otto Versand fires Heidi Klum for becoming pregnant, she announced on her website. It's not like she doesn't have other engagements.

Soccer Made In Germany

2005-03-26T10:50:51+00:00

Allesaussersport notes a couple of American articles on the German Bundesliga.

* Business Week: Germanys League Of Limping Football Teams
* New York Times: Germany Still Consumed by a Scandal

I haven't checked them out yet, but by the titles I'm guessing they are none too positive.

Flower Pot

2005-03-26T08:59:45+00:00

Meet Us at the Flakstellung

2005-03-26T06:42:54+00:00

Tonight is the annual Easter Fire here in town, the biggest event of the year. Like every year, I got a chuckle from the announcement that it would be held at the Flakstellung. There are no signs or anything, you just have to know that that's the hill outside of town where the Fl(ieger)a(bwehr)k(anone) (anti-aircraft artillery) was located during the war.

Or just wait until the bonfire is lit, and follow the smoke.

Teenage Mum Home Office

2005-03-25T08:08:56+00:00

Sims-style "Teenage Mum" public service ad. Doing home office with a child isn't much different. (Boing Boing)

Carstensen in Exile

2005-03-24T19:44:04+00:00

It's dangerous to watch news channels with the sound turned off. I glanced at N24 this afternoon, and they were scrolling headlines from Kyrgyzstan while showing pictures of Peter Harry Carstensen. My first thought was that mobs had stormed the Landtag in Kiel and had forced the the CDU leader into exile.

Given everything that's happened in Schleswig-Holstein the past few weeks, the thought isn't really that far fetched.

Respect!

2005-03-24T07:20:13+00:00

Jeremy Zawodny:

The problem for me, of course, is that the technology has advanced 4-5 years since I swore it off. That's a lot of time on the web.... "I'm pretty smart, but this shit is hard."... I think a lot of people who've been doing "web stuff" long enough think that web developers are the same as the "HTML monkeys" we use to refer to back in the day. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

True. That's why I switched from web development to systems administration. Cross-system vi compatibility is a lot easier to deal with than cross-system browser (in)compatibility. (Not to mention that I have no design sense at all.) I'll let the experts like couch and fab1An make the sites look good. I'll stick to keeping them running.

Borders and Tunnels

2005-03-23T18:35:38+00:00

Two items from John Robb's Weblog today: one from the New York Times on an elaborate tunnel discovered at the Mexican border, and another on a citizens' militia in Arizona to patrol the border.

This is related to Nicole Simon's indignation at the treatment of legitimate travellers entering the United States. That policy, considering the ease with which drugs and terrorists can enter the country from Mexico, is a big sham. And as Nicole points out, people are indignant enough to not travel or work in the US at allow. That's tourist money, business, talent and knowledge that is permanently lost to the US.

Meanwhile, according to the Times, 80 migrants per year are found dead on the US side of the fence at the Mexican border. Less than 200 Germans were killed during the entire history of the Berlin Wall. Which border is more dangerous?

I'll Be The Envy Of The Office...

2005-03-23T11:34:01+00:00

in my Bloglines T-Shirt.

And yes, that is a camera growing out of my ear.

Wonkette Disses Podcasters

2005-03-23T08:12:56+00:00

Wonkette: "The One America Committee, John Edwards's PAC, is venturing out into territory heretofore occupied only by losers with too much time on their hands (which, really, means this sort of makes sense): the Podcast." (File under "Posted to provoke Nicole")

HOWTO: Walk to the shops with more than one small child

2005-03-22T17:37:25+00:00

HOWTO: Walk to the shops with more than one small child "8) You should have experienced no more than three screaming fits or paddies by this point. If you have it is best to call it a day and do some internet shopping instead. It will come quicker, believe me." And we don't even have any shops within walking distance.

tvtorrents.de? for kids?

2005-03-21T19:50:38+00:00

I'm so 20th century. Is there a torrent site like http://www.btefnet.net/ for German TV? Where I can get children's programs? I would win a lot of points with Christopher if I could download yesterday's Sendung Mit Der Maus as easily as I can download The Daily Show.

(Actually, it's too late to win points with Christopher. He called me a Dödel because I forgot to record it for him. I don't even know what a Dödel is, except that it's an insult from Laura's Stern.)

Unicode Wallpaper

2005-03-21T07:29:29+00:00

Unicode wallpaper. No, not for your computer, for your wall, a 6 by 12 ft poster to download and print. (ongoing)

Stupid Tricks with Active Directory

2005-03-20T08:44:36+00:00

Did you know that if you enable interactive login for a particular user in a domain with Active Directory, you then disallow allow logins for all other users in the domain? Including Administrator? For all machines in the domain?

Pardon me, I have to go in and reboot our server in safe mode so I (and everyone else) can log back in.

Someone Had A Grudge

2005-03-19T21:13:41+00:00

In Germany politics, it almost seems that nothing happens without first being approved in advanced by a party committee, and it's almost a relief when something spontaneous and unexpected occurs. The minority Red-Green government in Schleswig-Holstein was signed, sealed, but in the end not delivered. One member of the supposed coalition abstained in four secret ballots, und thus Premier Heidi Simonis fell one vote short of forming a government and subsequently resigned after nearly 12 years in office.

Schleswig-Holstein is a small fish in national politics, but symbolically this is a huge blow for Chancellor Schröder and the SPD. If you can't get your own back-benchers to support a long-standing state premier, how can you be expected to run the largest country in the EU? And how can you expect to keep ruling Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany's largest and last remaining Red-Green state which holds elections in May (the polls are neck and neck).

Simonis, Germany's first and only female premier, always spoke her mind and I'll miss her for that (and her hats). Maybe Schröder will find a place for her in his Home for Wayward SPD Premiers (er, I mean his cabinet).

Freebird!

2005-03-19T18:43:43+00:00

Not A Dollarshort: Yelling 'Freebird!' In a Crowded Theater. I didn't know people were still doing this. Do Germans even know what Freebird is? Hell, I'm old enough to remember the original.

You're so German!

2005-03-19T07:17:24+00:00

FAZ: You're so German! An expat returns home...

The ultimate culture shock, however, hit me during my first visit to the supermarket. Seconds after entering, I noticed a swarm of shop employees honing in on me like heat-seeking missiles. They began barraging me with ”How are yous.” Rather than jumping for joy at the friendly customer service I had missed for so long, all I could think was ”You don't know me!” and ”Why are you pretending like you're my best friend?!”

(via Nate)

My Boss, The Criminal

2005-03-16T06:00:18+00:00

I was thinking about going to CeBIT yesterday to meet Nico and Heiko, but I didn't have a babysitter (or a suit), and besides, I can meet Nico and Heiko in Hamburg anytime I want (at least when I have a babysitter).

Good thing, since on the train back to Hamburg Nico had a small disagreement with the conductor about his ticket, refused to pay full price, and ended up being handed over to federal agents at the next station. There were witnesses.

The stories are in German, but the short moral is that if you upgrade your BahnCard, the Deutsche Bahn may consider tickets booked with your old BahnCard to be invalid. Or not. You might be better off driving. Or flying.

Enterprise: Family

2005-03-12T20:01:26+00:00

Is is just me, or is there something (or someone) missing from the Stern cover photo for the article "Enterprise Family: How modern women manage everday life"? This to me sums up everything that's wrong with the German attitude towards families and children (although I must admit I was so pissed off by the cover that I haven't bothered to read the article).

Even Dinosaurs Can Lay Eggs

2005-03-11T06:38:15+00:00

Loic Le Meur: T-Online Germany launches weblogs on TypePad! Now I know why Heiko's blog has been so quiet lately.

This is great news for weblogging in Germany, even for those of us who work for the competition. The Telekom may be an IT dinosaur, but T-Online is still the number one ISP in Germany (and in Europe). Blogs still haven't reached critical mass, blogs are starting to get some media attention, and a push from the magenta giant can't hurt. And maybe, since T-Online is a multi-national ISP, they can generate some trans-national multi-lingual European blogging magic...

Naaa.... dinosaurs have small brains, they can't think that fast.

First Level Support

2005-03-09T22:11:41+00:00

One of the, er, joys of my new job is administering a spanking new Citrix server on Windows Server 2003, as well as the accounts of those who use it. This is a new experience for me, since before I was strictly a network admin, which meant 1) no Windows and 2) no users. In the jargon of the trade, I performed second, not first, level support. Now at nu2m I am first, second, last, and all levels of support in between.

So it was with some trepidition that I approached my leading problem this morning, namely that the Citrix users in Cologne weren't able to find their local printers. I tried to approach the problem technically, logging in on a test account, but alas I was able to print find my local printer, so I couldn't reproduce the problem. I checked the account permissions, and they were all set up to automatically use local printers. Checking the printer directory, a printer was in fact set up for one of the users but not the other (who had been logged in for over a week). After over an hour I still couldn't tell what was wrong with them that wasn't wrong with me, so I had them give me a call.

The problem was not technical at all. I talked the first user through trying out Wordpad, and the problem was just that the sever had selected the PDF Writer as her default printer, and she wasn't aware that her real printer was there waiting to be selected. For the other user, the printer appeared after she logged out and logged back on.

So I could have read FAQs and Googled and tested all day long... there was no way I could have solved the problem by myself until I actually talked to the users myself. It doesn't matter that the solution was hand-holding over the phone instead of a clever admin trick. The problem was solved, the users could now do their work. And that's what my job is, enabling people to work ~~(so I don't have to)~~.

Oh, and don't worry about Nico's sreeenshot, I've set our firewall so that he can't do any more blogging or surfing under Citrix.

Story with Two Sides

2005-03-08T05:22:40+00:00

Christopher's Story: On our way back from my first day of ski school, I stopped for a few moments to play in a hill of snow. When I looked up, Mama and Papa were gone! They must have gone back to the cabin without me! I knew that our cabin was just up the hill, so that's where I went, but I couldn't find Mama or Papa's footprints in the snow. Then I couldn't remember which of the cabins was ours... and I started to cry. Then a nice man came out of one of the houses to help me. He called his neighbor to ask if she knew a little boy, and then he took me to her house. There in the street was my Papa! I ran to him, and he thanked the nice man many times. We then called Mama, and when she came we all promised that next time we lost each other, we would go back to where we had last seen one another and wait.

Papa's Story: On our way back from Christopher's first day of ski school, we went inside to check his registration. When I went back outside to check on Christopher, he was gone. He had been playing on a pile of snow in the hotel parking lot. Within a few steps was the hotel, a restaurant, a construction site, and the ski hill. He was nowhere to be found. We put out an announcement in the restaurant ("Christopher, your parents are looking for you, please come to the cashier!") and in the hotel. 30 minutes had passed, and we were starting to panic. Our cabin was just a 5 minute walk... maybe Christopher had gone home. We decided that I would go to the cabin while Mama waited in the parking lot where we had last seen him. As I got to the door, the lady next door asked if I was looking for a little boy. Her neighbor had called saying he had found him, and they were coming right over. At that moment a man with Christopher turned into our street. Everything was alright! I thanked the man many times, then ran with Christopher inside to call Mama with the news. When she came we all promised that next time we lost each other, we would go back to where we had last seen one another and wait.

This has now become Christopher's favorite bedtime story, even more popular than the "day Christopher was born" story.

blo.gs for Sale

2005-03-06T08:19:49+00:00

Catching up on my reading, I noticed at phil ringnalda that Jim Winstead is selling blo.gs. Too bad, I've used blo.gs ever since it started, it's still one of my favorite web services, and I'd have paid for a premium service had one ever been offered. blo.gs would be a nice fit for blogg.de, seeing as nu2m.de is a php/mysql shop. But I'm not sure Nico wants to expand his empire (and his bandwidth costs) outside the German-speaking blog(g) world.

Anyway, good luck to you Jim, and thanks for all the fish.

Silver Medal

2005-03-05T21:02:12+00:00

Christopher at the finish of the race on the last day of his ski course. He finished second in his group.

Back Again

2005-03-05T18:04:29+00:00

We're back after a week offline in the Austrian Alps. Did we miss anything? Did anybody miss us?

Vacation

2005-02-26T05:22:14+00:00

We're gone. To Leogang. In Austria. See you. Next week.

Night Shift

2005-02-23T21:02:37+00:00

As you can tell from the downtime notice on blogg.de, I'm putting in a night shift this evening, moving our servers into a new rack where we have lots of room for expansion. The two hour estimate is a bit pessimistic, but I've learned that what can go wrong usually does go wrong when you are overconfident.

I'm getting too old for all nighters... if it comes to that, it means disaster has struck, and since PapaScott is not located at blogg.de, I'll be able to relate the sad details here. But it's not going to come to that.

Five Questions

2005-02-21T08:48:12+00:00

Andrea passed the Five Questions meme on to me. Good thing I've been paying attention, I had my answers ready.

1. Total amount of music files on your computer:
moneyball:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music shanson$ du -sh 6.5G

2. The last CD you bought was:
Depends on what you mean by CD...
The last physical CD I bought was Christmas music for Christopher: "Weihnachten im Kindergarten" by Rolf Zuckowski. The last album I bought at iTunes Music Store was "Gold Medal" by The Donnas last November. The last album I bought at allofmp3.com was "Greatest Hits" by The Bangles last week.

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?
"My Love Will Not Let You Down" by Bruce Springsteen.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.
"The River" by Bruce Springsteen
"Best Friend's Girl" by The Cars
"When U Were Mine" by Prince
"Mach Die Augen Zu" by Die Ärzte
"Nur Geträumt" by Nena

These are all "I've lost my love and now I've lost my mind" songs, except for Nena. And "Downbound Train" would a more fitting Springsteen song, but I like "The River" better.

5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why?
Don't know yet... most everyone I read has already done this.

Schleswig-Holstein Counts the Votes

2005-02-21T04:30:09+00:00

That's what I get for going to bed early. The official count came out at midnight, and the CDU-FDP have fallen short of a majority by 70 votes. Of the 69 seats in the state parliament, they have 34 to 33 for SPD-Green.

The 2 remaining seats belong the SSW, the Danish minority party exempt from the 5% clause. They won't join a coalition, but would tolerate a minority government. The SSW supports a Scandinavian model for economic and education policies, and are more likely to support a SPD government.

Schleswig-Holstein Votes

2005-02-20T18:43:56+00:00

My wife's home state Schleswig-Holstein held elections today, and it looks like Red-Green has been defeated. The polls showed the SPD 3% ahead of the CDU, but the latest count shows the CDU 2% ahead. Was there really a 5% swing at the last minute, or were the polls wishful thinking from the media?

Interesting that education was a major issue in the campaign, with the CDU for the traditional 3-tiered secondary school system, and the SPD for a unified system more like that in the US. Apparently the German voters are more comfortable with the old system, and I doubt that a change in school system will be a campaign issue this year or next.

Dusting The Bookends

2005-02-19T21:07:42+00:00

Funny, ever since I went to work for a blogging company, I don't really have time to pay attention to my own blog. But I did some tweaking today. I put in new song lyrics in the header, and put back the photo of the DDR uprising girl. And I adjusted the blogroll to show only a random category instead of the whole thing, plus the expat weblogs (since that's probably the most unique group I belong to). Randomizing the blogroll will probably mess with Technorati's mind when counting my outgoing links, though. We'll see.

Homework

2005-02-17T19:03:40+00:00

Christopher is busy tracing letters in his Laura's Star alphabet book.

Right now Christopher totally enthralled by the Lauras Stern series of books (available in English as Laura's Star), in which Laura finds and mends a fallen star. He now dreams of flying in a cardboard rocket, just like Laura.

C64, Where Are You?

2005-02-16T22:44:51+00:00

For the past 20 years a Commodore 64 was instrumental in displaying the departures and arrivals at the Dortmund train station. Now the C64 has died, the display has gone black, and the station has a big problem: a new display system would cost over 3 million Euros. (WDR, via Industrial Technology & Witchcraft)

Update: Welcome visitors from fark.com. Alas, it wasn't a C64 after all, as one of you points out in my comments (see also heise.de), but an Intel 310 system with a 80286 processor. WDR has now corrected their story. ITW also published the correction, and also links to video news clips from WDR (in German, of course).

Where's The Towel?

2005-02-16T20:27:05+00:00

Instapundit points to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer at amazon.com. I'm not into science fiction anymore, but Hitchhiker's Guide is, of course, philosophy. The trailer is a bit loud for philosophy, though, and I didn't notice a towel.

Keep Me Dumb, Please

2005-02-16T20:18:32+00:00

Duncan rambles on how we bloggers (among others) keep ourselves dumb.

> We choose to believe the hype, the conspiracy theories, and the outright lies
that are fed to us by the media on a daily basis, and we bloggers seem
quite willing to embellish which ever brand of bias we prescribe too... Its too much fun to bash George Bush, and it remains to be too much of a blog traffic magnet to just give up. The same holds true with bashing Hillary. It is, therefore, no surprise that disinformation is the literature of choice in the 21st century, as it was in the 20th, and the 19th.

SELECT * FROM error;

2005-02-15T10:29:48+00:00

I haven't seen this explicitly stated anywhere, but you probably don't want to run mysqlsnapshot on a database that is already an active master, since the script issues a RESET MASTER which will stop replication in its tracks.

Another good hint for mysql is to make sure that the mysql user has write privileges in its data directory. That's such a basic mistake that you don't even think it could go wrong, but it can.

Dresden Connection

2005-02-11T22:03:27+00:00

Both Gerd Stodiek from Lübeck and Jonathon Delacour from Australia have recently written about the upcoming anniversary of the bombing of Dresden. I hope they will read each others posts.

Downbound Train

2005-02-11T21:52:35+00:00

Sometimes Hamburg reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song:

> I had a job, I had a girl
> I had something going mister in this world
> I got laid off down at the lumber yard
> Our love went bad, times got hard
> Now I work down at the carwash
> **Where all it ever does is rain**
> Don't you feel like you're a rider on a downbound train

Schockwellenreiter RSS

2005-02-11T21:36:01+00:00

The Schockwellenreiter has a new RSS feed, in case you're like me and only read Bloglines and wondered where Jörg has been the past few days...

Blogging Policy

2005-02-11T18:27:24+00:00

Scobleizer:
Microsoft's corporate blogging policy: "don't piss off your boss". I can live with that, as long as I can (gently) make fun of him every once in a while.

Last Dance

2005-02-09T22:15:14+00:00

Today was my last day of work at Netlife... a bittersweet day to say the least, after six years of dot.com, or more correctly, dot.de boom, bust, survival, and finally, the end of the rope. We concieved Christopher just after I started, and my work at there was our sole support from his birth to his first birthday. I'm still grateful that. But today I'm happy to put the uncertainty behind me, sad to leave the few good friends and colleagues who remain, and frustrated that the circumstances made it impossible to make a clean break. The bankruptcy administrator is telling us he has several serious takeover offers. We'll see.

But now I can devote my full attention to Nico and my new colleagues at nu2m.de, who've all been very understanding that I couldn't jump completely on board right away. Thanks, I'm 100% here now.

43

2005-02-09T02:59:19+00:00

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another ~~day~~ year older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store </p>

A sign of my age is that my iPod is full of music and not podcasts. Who has time to listen to words that you're going to throw away anyway?

Nobody Expects The Bloglines Askquisition!

2005-02-08T06:45:04+00:00

wingedpig.com: Nobody Expects The Bloglines Askquisition!

Closed In Remembrance

2005-02-07T06:59:01+00:00

I don't see it anywhere on their websites, but today all offices of the McDonald's Corporation are closed in remembrance of former CEO Charlie Bell, who died of cancer last month at age 44. I'm sure the gesture costs a six- if not a seven-figure sum, but McDonald's thinks of themselves as family and sometimes acts more like a family-run business than a Dow Jones listed corporation.

Martin Mubanga

2005-02-06T21:50:34+00:00

Martin Mubanga: How I entered the hellish world of Guantanamo Bay

Bloglines sold by Heiko Hebig

2005-02-06T20:44:02+00:00

Bloglines sold by Heiko Hebig. I didn't realize it was his to sell.

Relaunch

2005-02-04T20:55:27+00:00

Today while Sven and I were fighting with software raids, flash disk firewalls and SCSI controllers, our more creative colleagues were unveiling the relaunch of blogg.de. I won't try to guess who had more fun.

Hostnames

2005-02-04T08:26:26+00:00

Assigning meaningful yet witty hostnames is an important task for every systems administrator.

When I recently took over a pair of webservers named nelson and milhouse, I immediately thought of Watergate-era US politicians, since I knew my new boss had studied politics at Berkeley. Only later did I realize that it was actually Matt Groening who was thinking of politicans when he was naming characters for The Simpsons. (The companion servers itchy and scratchy should have been a dead giveaway.)

Too bad, since the firewalls protecting nelson and milhouse would have been perfectly named haldeman and erlichman. haldeman in front, he's the heavy.

Satin Pajamas

2005-02-02T18:35:55+00:00

Yesterday the winners of The Satin Pajama Awards were announced at A Fist Full of Euros. I didn't mention them until now because I was actually nominated for Best Weblog By An Expatriate and I didn't want to increase my chances of winning (I blog to please myself, not anyone else), although judging by the results (12 out of 659 votes) I didn't have anything to worry about. Lady Lyssa won Best Weblog from Germany, so the voters obviously have good taste. If you're looking for some good European weblogs, or even a French weblog from Texas, check out the results.

Dot Com Zombie

2005-02-02T03:44:09+00:00

The funny thing about my previous employer going bankrupt is that for January we will get paid on time for the first time in months. The government guarantees three months pay in event of insolvency, so it is routine for the court-appointed administrator to get a bank credit for paying salaries.

The not-so-funny thing is that the bankruptcy process has delayed my departure, as releases from employment contracts need to be approved by the administrator, and he wasn't signing any releases at first. He's now releasing people not going to the competition, so I should be clear now. My boss and I have agreed on a release date of mid February.

The good news for my co-workers is that the administrator is confident that a serious buyer will be found, one interested in keeping the present customers, projects and developers.

Meanwhile, at my new job Nico has my new office ready :-).

Maybe the Amish are on to something

2005-02-02T03:16:56+00:00

bronski.net:
"Maybe the Amish are on to something Bet they never get Spam"

No Klum

2005-01-31T21:02:03+00:00

My wife has the chance to meet supermodel Heidi Klum, but she's turning it down. It's not just that she doesn't think she is an appropriate spokesperson for her business or that she seems to be "just as blond as she looks". It's mostly because her male colleagues can't think straight anymore because their tongues are hanging out at the prospect of meeting a real, live supermodel.

If you care to meet Heidi Klum, she'll be doing promotion at the
Hamburg ZOB (central bus station) next Wednesday. But don't expect to get real close.

Plagerism

2005-01-30T19:30:59+00:00

This can't be a coincidence. First ITW publishes the healing hands of Siemens the day after I already did, then Nico plays plays bet-and-win with Hoyzer the day after I already did.

Come on guys. Isn't it enough that we Americans invented both the internet and the weblog? Do you really have to steal our weblog posts as well?

I Fear No Evil

2005-01-30T12:18:05+00:00

I could ask today what operation is more dangerous, guarding a polling place for the Iraqi election, or supervising a carload of 5-year-olds for Christopher's birthday party. But such a question would be crude, rude and politcally totally incorrect.

I'm not wearing any body armour, I like living on the edge.

Medienkritik Goes Deutsch

2005-01-30T04:33:30+00:00

Interesting... David and RayD, the folks behind Davids Medienkritik, are planning a new German-language blog, and thay hope to attract the attention of the German public with mainstream advertising. Blogging, politics, mainstream press, advertising? I just happen to know that Nico Lumma is expert for all of those, and he just happens to be my new boss. Nico's political heart beats deep red, but you may want to give him a call anyway.

Bet & Win

2005-01-29T08:46:23+00:00

Maybe it's just me, but isn't it a bit funny (as in strange) that most of the German online stories about the current Bundesliga match fixing scandal feature a banner ad for online sports betting (Bild, SpOn, Kicker, Sport1)?

It's also funny that the referee Hoyzer hat a thing about Hamburg; 3 of the 5 supposedly fixed matches went against either HSV or FC St. Pauli. I'm kind of waiting for the revelation that in the cup match against Paderborn, Hoyzer had actually bet on HSV, but they still lost.

Use Photoshop

2005-01-28T20:43:20+00:00

So, you are about to take over a multinational company, but you're a little embarassed by the big Rolex you're wearing in your official press photo, especially considering you'll be announcing over 1000 layoffs. What do you do? Use Photoshop!

Hi Mom

2005-01-28T17:02:48+00:00

My mother sent me a mail wondering why I haven't posted here in a few days. Am I sick? Busy? No, Mom, everything's OK. We're all just a little pre-occupied, that's all. I'll call you this weekend.

Quote Unquote

2005-01-22T20:39:56+00:00

German For Beginners on the Bild Zeitung: "Bild is the most popular newspaper in Germany, it's kind of right-wing, a bit down-market and features semi-naked females - it would be instantly recognisable to Britons as 'The Sun with Umlauts'... The newspaper is, and I want to be kind here, absolute and utter crap."

Except of course that The Sun puts its girls on Page 3, while Bild puts them on the front page under the fold. Bild has a deal with McDonald's where you can buy the newspaper in the restaurant, with the latest edition displayed at the entrance. As customers leave the restaurant, they see the back of the paper, and are thus treated to an upside-down Bild-Girl behind glass.

Busted!

2005-01-20T19:16:15+00:00

The other shoe has finally dropped. My present employer, the Netlife AG, today declared bankruptcy. The unknown investor who was to save the company in reduced form apparently backed out.

Salaries have been paid out in full through December, so noone is waiting on back pay. We'll have to apply to the Arbeitsamt for Insolvenzgeld to cover our January salaries, and after that I'll be gone. Most of my fellow admins have landed on their feet elsewhere, and none of us are shedding any tears.

Update: Just to make it clear, this is my old job where I was down to half-time and had already resigned. My new job (nothing to see there yet, but one thing they do is blogg.de) begins on 1 February.

Naked Advertising

2005-01-19T22:43:22+00:00

In the States, women who posed for Playboy with their employer's logo would be fired. In Germany, the employer (the electronics retailer Media Markt) cooperates with Playboy and advertises it, which gives a whole new meaning to "not safe for work". (via ameisendorf.de)

I Will Follow

2005-01-19T22:12:41+00:00

So I too am helping Google to Preventing Comment Spam by jumping on the rel="nofollow" bandwagon. Not that's going to prevent much of anything. If comment spam is anything like email spam, we're going to see four waves, each exponentially bigger than the one before: the originators, the copy-cats, the script-kiddies and then the robots. Only the first wave is smart. The rest will never notice that comment spam is no longer doing them any good, and won't bother to quit.

So what actual good does being indexed by Google do me anyway, other than sending me copy-cats, script-kiddies and robots to click on my Google ads?

After A Fashion

2005-01-19T16:04:13+00:00

Strangely enough, I haven't seen any German blogs mention the murder of Munich "fashion guru" Rudolph Moshammer, only expat bloggers, and all located in the free state
of Bavaria, where Moshammer was quite a local celebrity.

Then again, up north we have to put up with Dieter Bohlen, so I don't think we have it any better. He makes the news with hit-and-run encounters, be they with parked cars or carpet saleswomen.

Converting Manila to Movable Type

2005-01-18T06:49:21+00:00

Jason Levine has now published his script for converting Manila to Movable Type (which can then be converted to anything else). He helped Susan convert 6 months ago (when I couldn't), and I'm glad his recipe is now available for everyone.

Linux Mini

2005-01-18T05:42:22+00:00

My newest toy is a Linksys NSLU2, a little plastic box (no bigger than my hand) with an ethernet port and 2 USB ports. It's designed to be an instant file server... just plug in an USB hard disk and it works. But the real fun is that it runs Linux; you can swap out the firmware, telnet in and install some useful software. There are even easy-to-install packages. Too bad it only has 1 ethernet port, otherwise I'm sure my boss Nico would want to try it out as a firewall.

Minnesota Town Hits 54 Below Zero

2005-01-17T18:06:39+00:00

Minnesota Town Hits 54 Below Zero (-48°C) I guess winter has finally arrived back home, eh?

Sansibar

2005-01-16T18:31:01+00:00

We took a weekend trip to Sylt, and spent this morning on Sansibar Beach. Temperature 5°C, but with the wind it felt like -10°C.

Fussball-Ventilatoren

2005-01-14T02:28:36+00:00

German For Beginners: Fussball-Ventilatoren

Application Rejected

2005-01-13T20:12:51+00:00

I haven't posted in a while about our local anti-wind generator group, but we just got a notice in the Hamburger Abendblatt. Rough translation: the county has now twice denied a building permit for the generators. If the developers now wish to pursue the project further, they would have to go to court. We're 90% sure the proposal is now dead.

Congratulations!

2005-01-12T18:58:59+00:00

Congratulations to Dave, newly employed expat blogger in Hamburg!

No Joy in Macville

2005-01-11T20:08:18+00:00

code: theWebSocket: There is no joy in Macville Well, I can see that the Apple old-timers can't be real happy that Apple is turning into a electronic Abercrombie & Fitch outfitter for the iPod generation. On the other hand, can't you see yourself with a miniMac or three on your desk?

W's iPod Playlist:

2005-01-11T19:59:52+00:00

Wonkette: W's iPod Playlist Rock the Casbah!

My first usenet post

2005-01-11T14:13:35+00:00

My first Usenet post? 7 Aug 1994 in comp.os.linux.misc: "I visited the US last month, and though I didn't look very hard, I was disappointed to see nothing about Linux in any of the bookstores I
visited." (Prompted by Matthew's first Usenet post.)

Update: Ooops, just found an older one: 12 May 1994 in comp.text.tex: "Is there any way to convert (TeX) to a format that can be imported
into Quark XPress on the Macintosh?"

Christopher's Cooking Show

2005-01-10T21:01:03+00:00

A photo series.

The Other Side

2005-01-10T14:09:56+00:00

Christopher and Papa yesterday at the zoo (courtesy of Nico). Christopher is the tough guy hiding his eyes. Papa is the one in the dorky cap.

Pay Per Read

2005-01-10T05:09:40+00:00

So I read that Adam Kalsey is sending SMS by e-mail for a project, and I wonder... well, first why doesn't Adam just get a GSM modem... but then, why do the carriers allow that, don't they miss out on the revenue? But of course, this is America, where the cell phone business is backwards and both sender and recipient pay for SMS, and since text messesging is now taking off in the States, the first kids are getting horrendous bills. So never mind.

Hagenbecks

2005-01-09T21:00:28+00:00

Christopher and I met Nico, Sibylle and Frederike for a cool and windy afternoon at Hagenbecks Tierpark, Hamburg's zoo. It looks like Nico and I nearly simultaneously photographed each other.

Nico and Frederike, and Sibylle's back.

The Sitzpinkler Phenomenon

2005-01-09T19:26:20+00:00

Instapundit: The Sitzpinkler Phenomenon (first mentioned here) may explain why Americans don't take Germany or German politics very seriously, since the main thing they remember about Germany is the strange toilet. Then again, didn't these Americans wonder what the toilet-bowl shaped brush next to the toilet was for?

And as for Sitzpinkeln itself, if you're man enough to stand up, you're man enough to clean up... otherwise you should remain seated. Right?

Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyl

2005-01-09T06:51:27+00:00

Reality TV: "Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle" in North Korean television (via Wortfeld)

Haircut

2005-01-08T19:54:29+00:00

Cool doo, dude! (He just won a game at wdrmaus.de)

New Media-orites

2005-01-06T16:11:07+00:00

The new IT Department at New Media Management. And, as Thorsten points out, most of us have weblogs.

Banner Ad

2005-01-03T20:28:24+00:00

My banner ad solicits donations to a coalition of German aid organizations for tsunami victims. Here are a few more places to donate, thanks to
Anders Jacobsen.

International aid organizations:
UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund)
United Nations' World Food Programme
Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders (donate!)
CARE International
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

UK/Europe:
Disasters Emergency Comittee (DEC) - comprises a raft of aid agencies, including the below and others
British Red Cross
Save the Children UK

North America:
American Red Cross
Canadian Red Cross
Save The Children

Anders Jacobsen: Webloggers: Give to tsunami victims and I'll give too!

Holiday Recovery

2005-01-02T19:12:36+00:00

We've made it through the holidays. The American visitors are now home, the birthday boy is now 5, the goose leftovers are gone, and the last fireworks were fired last night. We just need a few days now to rest up, and we're ready to start work again. Except we don't have a few days. We both go back to work tomorrow.

My new job at nu2m starts on February 1, except I've started a few projects already. One advantage is that I can work from home, mostly because Nico is short on office space. I'm at the old job this month yet, wrapping things up.

That photo above might be the last from our Canon PowerShot A70 (bought Sept 2003). When we turned it on this morning, the display showed mostly black and the images are abstract blobs of light. So to the repair shop it will go. If the guarantee doesn't cover it, it won't pay to fix it, since the current model costs just half what we paid for the A70.

Strip Comments

2004-12-31T11:22:01+00:00

This is perl one-liner to strip comments from a text file (found in the documentation for mod_auth_tkt). I'm posting it here so I can google for "strip comments" when I need it.

perl -ne 'print if /^\s*[^#\s]/'

Linie fra Norge

2004-12-28T19:15:02+00:00

My father says that if we don't serve lutefisk with our aquavit, we have to at least have the proper glasses.

Close-up of the glass showing flag and text. And aquavit.

Tidal Waves Then and Now

2004-12-26T21:25:16+00:00

I try not to post about world events unless I have something unique to say. Indeed there is nothing one can say, words cannot describe the devestation caused by today's tidal wave in Southeast Asia, killing thousands. The earthquake that caused the tsunami is described as the largest (8.9 magnitude) in more than 40 years.

The next largest earthquake, 1964 in Alaska (9.2 magnitude), caused 131 deaths and is a part of my family history. The resulting tidal wave caused death and destruction as far south as California. Hardest hit in California was Crescent City (11 dead). My father worked in Crescent City at the time for the state Department of Highways, surveying US Highway 101. He remembers that it was a series of 4 waves, and it was the last of them that devastated the town.

As we heard of todays quake, my father said that there must have been some kind of warning... even in 1964 they knew hours in advance of the approaching wave. Then we saw the report on SPON that there is no tsunami warning system in southeast Asia. And it was clear that the tens of thousands who died today had no warning at all. Indeed.

Earlier and Earlier

2004-12-25T06:22:05+00:00

We could handle it when Christopher got us up at 6:30 on Christmas Eve morning. We can understand the anticipation on the day when Santa arrives (at our house, he arrives while we are at church and leaves his package on Christopher's sled on the patio) and the presents will be opened. We can sleep late the next day.

Wrong. This morning Christopher was up at 5:30 to play with his new toys. The first thing he did was kiss each one, so I guess he likes them. The highlight is the Playmobil Airplane, which even the adults think is pretty cool.

Kills Every Taste Bud

2004-12-23T11:56:02+00:00

taz: Tötet jede Geschmacksknospe! "Norweger in aller Welt essen zu Weihnachten Lutefisk - einen grauenhaften Stinkfisch" (Kills every taste bud! Norwegians in the entire world at Christmas eat lutefisk - a horrible stinkfish) Smells like home to me...

The article also cites the Clay Shirky taste test: "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk."

Mama says she'll serve lutefisk and aquavit to my father, but only without the lutefisk.

Interesting Times

2004-12-22T07:53:17+00:00

I wrote before about how life was handing us a new twist of fate. I can now explain all the details.

Last month I had decided to stick it out at my old company. I reduced to 20 hours to give myself a little free time, but we remaining 3 admins had settled into a routine, and we had a new boss who respected us and our work, even if he didn't understand it.

Then colleague number 1 told us she was pregnant. She would be going on leave next May, probably for the full 3 years allowed by law.

Colleague number 2 then told us that he had a job offer from our former boss. He has to give 6 months notice, but would try to negotiate a release.

Then on November 30 our new boss told us that he, and several other project leaders, had resigned. They no longer believed in the future of the company. This was all the more troubling because they, like me, have quarterly contracts, so they were giving 4 months notice.

Just two weeks after signing my part-time contract, it was starting to look like a set of shackles. Downsizing the IT infrastructure of a company that was suddenly half the size of 6 months ago is certainly an interesting task, but interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". It's certainly a task I did not want to do by myself.

Then on the evening of the 30th, while I was contemplating the interesting times that lay ahead, Nico called me to say he had an admin position available, and whether I would be interested. We met on the following Dönerstag (er, Thursday), our discussion was very good, and that's when I wrote about twists of fate.

New Media Management

2004-12-21T22:08:07+00:00

It's now as good as official. With the new year I will be working as sys admin for New Media Management, part of the Ströer Gruppe and parent company of blogg.de, working for and with Nico Lumma. So it turns out that I am smart enough after all to get a job because of my weblog.

Nico and I have been telling each other for over a year that "wouldn't it be cool if we could somehow work together", and I am very happy that it has now worked out. I am looking very forward to working with Nico and his crew (Hi Thorte! Hi NicoB!). I'll be able to work around Christopher's schedule, but I'm sure that Dönerstag (translation: döner kebab on Thursday) will become a regular part of my weekly plan.

Apple Shop-in-Shop in Hamburg

2004-12-21T11:02:40+00:00

We don't yet have any Apple Stores in Germany, but we do now have an Apple Shop-in-Shop at the Saturn Megastore in downtown Hamburg, in case you're looking to pick up some white plastic stuff for the holidays. (Actually, Saturn has always sold Macs in the back corner of the basement... it looks like they just found a new corner and with new wallpaper and Apple logos.)

German beer at our World Cup!

2004-12-21T09:33:22+00:00

Bild: "German beer at our World Cup!" Bit instead of Bud (or milk).

Wulff Wants Milk Sold at World Cup

2004-12-21T07:53:54+00:00

AP: Wulff, Governor of Lower-Saxony, Wants Milk Sold at World Cup I'm glad our CDU Premier has a sense for what's really important.

Bloglines: Volume!

2004-12-21T07:14:47+00:00

wingedpig.com: "Eric was interested in the business model behind Bloglines. Not accepting my usual stock answer of 'Volume!', I detailed that we will integrating highly targetted contextual advertising into Bloglines next year..."

Gingerbread PC

2004-12-21T06:01:28+00:00

bronski.net: Gingerbread PC

Happy Holidays

2004-12-19T12:48:43+00:00

My parents arrived safely on Friday, the oxygen concentrator for my father is up and running, Mama and I are both off work, Christopher has his grandparents wrapped around his little finger, we're getting the Christmas tree today, the Christmas baking and cooking are planned for this week, and of course the big birthday on the 27th, so don't expect much writing here for the next two weeks. Maybe some pictures. We'll see.

Just Cos I Eat Worms

2004-12-17T06:43:13+00:00

Funny, with all the hoopla about comment spam lately, I haven't gotten a single spam for over a week. My MT-Blacklist log is empty. I had to write a spam myself to convince myself it was still working.

My anti-spam strategy of boring content must be working. Especially now that my Google Page Rank has dropped to 6, I'm simply no longer worth the bother, I hope.

Actually, I think closing comments on old entries helps more than anything.

Spams for Money

2004-12-15T20:45:51+00:00

Der Schockwellenreiter has found that the SEO consultant Hurra Communications attempts to increase the Google page rank of their clients by submitting comment spams to weblogs in their names. The case in question involved German blogs, but I'm sure if you hire them, they'd be willing to spam English language blogs as well.

PHP programmer in Hamburg

2004-12-15T14:13:46+00:00

Nico is looking for a PHP programmer in Hamburg. Affirmative action for bloggers. No .doc attachments need apply.

My Life and Hard Times

2004-12-15T05:11:58+00:00

December seems like a drag stip that ends in a brick wall, and we're speeding along in a hot rod without any brakes.

For Christopher, there is the anticipation of the double super-duper holiday of Christmas and birthday, and of course he is strung as high as a kite. Perspective parents should think of this, and would be best advised to avoid having any sex in late March at all to prevent giving birth to children in late December.

Mama is suffering from overdoses of work, travel, stess, and combinations thereof. When she is home, she tends to go to bed before Christopher, even when she is putting Christopher to bed. This is especially annoying when she disappears to bed without telling us. (My solution was to send Christopher to bed with her, and for me to sleep on the couch.)

My parents are arriving on Friday, which is special and wonderful, of course, since it will be their first Christmas with us in Germany. But there are preparations to be made... for example, my father requires an oxygen concentrator at night, and I spent weeks unsuccessfully trying to arrange for one. (The solution, by the way, to organizing medical equipment for foreign guests is that you don't... the arrangements need to be made in their home country for insurance and prescription reasons.)

As for me, after I had decided to stick it out part-time at work until things either work out or go bankrupt, I had a job opportunity literally fall into my lap, and I've decided to accept. I haven't signed anything yet (although we did virtually shake hands via instant messenger), so I won't give out any details now. But I've informed my present employer, and if I can find victims, er, delegate my responsibilites I should be able to start the new job on February 1.

But given everything else going on here at home, my excitement about the new job has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle. (And, yes, the job offer was the twist of fate that inspired the Truly, Deeply, Madly post, for those commenters who tried to guess.)

Christmas Card 2004

2004-12-14T17:55:34+00:00

I've posted this picture before, but we like it so much we used it as our Christmas card.

"Christopher reminds you to never leave home without your Penguin ID card. Merry Christmas!"

McDonald's Highest-Ranking Female Resigns

2004-12-14T05:17:39+00:00

DowJones: Babrowski, McDonald's Highest-Ranking Female, Resigns

Was Kerry poisoned?

2004-12-13T21:36:31+00:00

Was Kerry poisoned? Horrible disfigurement, with before and after pictures.

German Media Morality

2004-12-13T21:14:40+00:00

I've been following Jeff Jarvis and his campaign against the FCC and so-called morality in the US media. We don't have an FCC in Germany, but we do have the Bild Zeitung to watch over morals in the media and society... and we have BildBlog to watch over the Bild Zeiting. Lately, Bild has compained that a gay politician kissed a woman in public ("Is he no longer gay?"), that a TV nude scene was cut from a mini-series ("Is she not pretty enough for TV?"), and that Germany's most respected newscaster opened a dog salon ("Massages for rich Fifis"). So our morals in Germany are safe, thanks to Bild. (And thanks to BildBlog, we can know what's in the Bild Zeitung without actually have to read it ourselves.)

Canada and the USA PATRIOT Act

2004-12-13T09:35:31+00:00

Schneier on Security: Canada and the USA PATRIOT Act "It's one thing for countries to complain about U.S. counterterrorism policies, but it's quite another for countries to reduce their commerce with the U.S. The latter will get noticed in Washington far quicker than the former."

Expatriate Hipsters

2004-12-13T01:26:23+00:00

LA Times: U.S. Expatriate Hipsters Plug Into the Buzz of Berlin "Berlin is like the antidote to New York. It's all the things you want, the culture, the music scene, but none of the stress... (We) see it as a place of lower rents and better politics." (via chillmost.com)

MDAC Insanity

2004-12-12T19:00:44+00:00

How do people get serious work done with Windows? I have no idea...

My wife wanted to update the route planning software (i.e. how many km from A to B, so she can fill out her mileage log) on her Windows XP notebook. Her company sells an atlas with software included, but she couldn't get the program to run. "Not enough licenses, try again later."

Smart husband decides to save time and spend 20 to get her a real routing program. Mistake. It's the same program with a different name. "Not enough licenses, try again later." The problem is mentioned in the Install FAQ: Make sure you are running as Administrator. Of course I was already running as Administrator, so that's no help.

If this had been my notebook, at this point I would have installed Service Pack 2 and made sure everything was up to date. However, it's not my notebook, it's only got SP1, and the last thing I want to do is break anything; access to her company WAN is essential to her work. The setup program seems unable to detect that MDAC (included with Windows) is installed, so I make sure I have the latest version and patches, and for the Jet Database Engine as well. The updates install successfully, but no luck. "Not enough licenses, try again later."

Finally, after a couple hours of Googling, I find a FAQ at Microsoft that covers rolling back MDAC to the original version installed with Windows ("dasetup.exe /u"). Never mind that it doesn't cover XP or the version of MDAC that we have. I'm desperate, and I try it.

It works. Both setup programs no longer complain that MDAC is missing, and both programs are now installed and run flawlessly. I'm an experienced Sys Admin, and it only took me 6 hours to track down and correct a corrupted MDAC installation. I have no idea a normal Windows user is supposed fix something like this. Maybe Scoble can tell me. I know he follows linkbacks.... Scoble?

Best European Film

2004-12-12T09:04:40+00:00

SPON: "Gegen die Wand" best European film. Also Reuters:

"Gegen Die Wand" ("Head-On"), about a young Turkish woman in Germany who escapes her strict Muslim home through a difficult marriage with an older man, won the best film award in the competition dubbed the "European Oscars" on Saturday... The European Film Awards sealed the remarkable success of "Gegen Die Wand", which overcame a scandal over its star's porn movie past to score a German box-office success and win major prizes including the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. As well as best film, Turkish-German Fatih Akin collected the best director award for "Gegen Die Wand" in the People's Choice category on Saturday."

Akin lives and works in Hamburg-Altona, and much of the film was shot there.

stopping bullets with your teeth

2004-12-10T06:53:19+00:00

I thought stopping bullets with your teeth happened only in cartoons. Nice story, Alwin!

Truly, Deeply, Madly

2004-12-09T19:26:55+00:00

Ever since we first met, we have been very successful making sudden, impulsive decisions and letting fate take us where it may. Pledging to marry while on separate continents, dropping out of grad school, leaving Minneapolis without the promise of a job in Phoenix, leaving everything we owned to move to Germany, jumping head first into the IT boom in the late '90s, having our first child after 15 years of happy, peaceful marriage, jumping back into a career after a year of baby leave... these were all things we decided very quickly and suddenly to make happen or let happen to us.

We're on the verge of another such impulsive decision or twist of fate. If you've read the weblog for long, you might guess what it is.... more details once things are final. However, right now I'm just ecstatic to find that at my age, impulsive decisions can still happen.

2004-12-09T16:25:28+00:00

What, a Hamburg blogger meet not organized by Heiko and Nico? Why not.. Jamie and Elfe have set the time and place: next Thursday, 16 December, Christmas Market at Gänsemärkt, starting at 6:00 pm, until whenever. The bloggers will be the ones drinking Glühwein to keep warm.

(I can't say yet whether I can make it, since I'm alone with Christopher that night.)

Wanna buy some slaves on ebay?

2004-12-09T10:58:36+00:00

vowe: Wanna buy some slaves on ebay?

Sell Out

2004-12-09T08:02:25+00:00

BuzzMachine: "At National Airport's newsstands, they're selling Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers and souvenir notepads for 75 percent off."

I, for one, welcome our new feline overlords

2004-12-09T05:26:10+00:00

Groundhog Day: Cat Psychology "I, for one, welcome our new feline overlords."

Sock Puppet

2004-12-09T05:19:03+00:00

Evil thought: Edmund Stoiber is Angela Merkel's sock puppet

Red Hat Expensive Linux

2004-12-09T00:02:22+00:00

Dell: Red Hat needs to lower prices RHEL: Red Hat Expensive Linux

Strongly is not strong enough

2004-12-08T23:45:22+00:00

The corporation insists on an elaborate aptitude test for new employees that is intended to weed out troublemakers. When Barbara Ehrenreich took the test at the Minneapolis Wal-Mart, she was told that she had given a wrong answer when she agreed "strongly" with the proposition that "rules have to be followed to the letter at all times." The only acceptable answer for Wal-Mart was "very strongly." Similarly, the only correct answer to the proposition "there is room in every corporation for a non-conformist" was: "totally disagree."</p>

The New York Review of Books: Inside the Leviathan, an essay on WalMart. (via Davos Newbies)

The End

2004-12-08T09:33:04+00:00

The End: Hamburg 1943 by Hans Erich Nossack just published in English translation.

One didnt dare to inhale for fear of breathing it in. It was the sound
of eighteen hundred airplanes approaching Hamburg from the south at an
unimaginable height. We had already experienced two hundred or even
more air raids, among them some very heavy ones, but this was something
completely new. And yet there was an immediate recognition: this was
what everyone had been waiting for, what had hung for months like a
shadow over everything we did, making us weary. It was the end.

Novelist Hans Erich Nossack was forty-two when the Allied bombardments of German cities began, and he watched the destruction of Hamburg--the city where he was born and where he would later die--from across its Elbe River. He heard the whistle of the bombs and the singing of shrapnel; he watched his neighbors flee; he wondered if his home--and his manuscripts--would survive the devastation. The End is his terse, remarkable memoir of the annihilation of the city, written only three months after the bombing. A searing firsthand account of one of the most notorious events of World War II, The End is also a meditation on war and hope, history and its devastation. And it is the rare book, as W. G. Sebald noted, that describes the Allied bombing campaign from the German perspective.

The original is entitled Der Untergang published by Suhrkamp.

(Via North Sea Diaries)

Dog Blogging

2004-12-06T17:35:06+00:00

Boing Boing: Chinese editions of MSN Spaces censor political terms Didn't I just say that "big IT companies... are going to be more than happy to sell them the equipment and know-how to control everything" their citizens see on the Internet? What good is a weblog if you can't say what you want? I guess you have to blog about dogs...

Hamburg runway extension for A380

2004-12-06T17:14:58+00:00

AFP: Airbus says Hamburg runway extension for A380 cannot be prevented now

No English Spoken Here

2004-12-06T16:00:36+00:00

Deutsche Welle has announced the recipients of their 2004 Weblog Awards, with two awards in each category, one chosen by a jury and the other in an online vote. Interesting is that none of the winners of the main categories are written in English. I guess English speakers really are a minority in the world.

Some don't see the point, but that's OK. I still think it's a useful exercise that enables us to see what blogs elsewhere are doing, even if we don't know the language.

However, since DW seems unable to provide a concise list of the main winners, here's a list with links to both the descriptions at DW and the blogs themselves that they can copy and paste. I even corrected some the the URLs. :-)

* Best Blog Innovation
Jury Prize: Domino - Cover by Cover (German)
User Prize: Radio RSS (German)

* Best Design

Jury Prize: La Malarosa (Spanish)
User Prize: The Castle of Ergeal, the Northern Dragon (Russian)

* Best Subject
Jury Prize: El Hombre Que Comía Diccionarios (The Man Who Ate Dictionaries, Spanish)
User Prize: Estraga Filmes (Film Spoilers, Portuguese).

* Best Weblog
Jury Prize: 18摸狗日报 (Dog Newspaper, Chinese)
User Prize: Por um Punhado de Pixels (For a Handful of Pixels, Portuguese).

EditThisPage Again!

2004-12-05T20:08:42+00:00

Last year I nearly forgot my blog anniversary. This year I nearly forgot again (although I already unofficially celebrated this summer when Blogger turned 5). So happy 5th birthday to me (again), and to my fellow EditThisPage veterans!

American Nikolaus

2004-12-05T19:17:24+00:00

We tried to tell Christopher to put out his shoes for the Nikolaus tonight, but he insisted on putting out his Christmas stocking from Grandma instead.

Is Firefox a liberal browser?

2004-12-05T05:18:15+00:00

Is Firefox a liberal browser? "72% of right-leaning blog readers use Internet Explorer compared to only 60% of left-leaning blog readers."

Miracles

2004-12-04T15:06:49+00:00

Remembering 9/11

Do you to meet on the subway platform tomorrow morning? I asked him.
No, I gotta go in early. Were holding a conference downtown.
I could get up early too.
I have to be there at 8 AM sharp. I cant be late.
Its only SoHo.
No, its at the World Trade Center.

(via 2020 Hindsight)

Just like Las Vegas

2004-12-02T07:41:32+00:00

inessential: Black Box Parsing "A black box is like Las Vegas: what happens in the box stays in the box."

Kat Clock

2004-12-02T07:26:28+00:00

The Kat Clock Widget for Konfabulator looks like a must have!

Cardboard Train

2004-12-01T16:14:51+00:00

Papa was late coming home this afternoon, so he had to build a cardboard train for Christopher to make up for it. That white styrofoam thing is supposed to be a smokestack.

Citizenship and Dual Nationality

2004-11-29T14:53:43+00:00

Since I'm often asked about Christopher's citizenship status, here is a primer on Citizenship and Dual Nationality from the US Embassy. For Christopher: "A child born to an American parent and a German parent acquires both American and German citizenship at birth, regardless of place of birth, if the parents satisfy the jus soli or jus sanguinis requirements of their respective countries... Neither country requires a person born under these circumstances to choose between American and German citizenship, i.e., he/she may keep both citizenships his/her entire life."

However, for his parents: "Under German law, a person may not have more than one citizenship unless he/she was born with both... Thus, German law requires an American who becomes a German citizen through the Einbürgerung process to formally renounce his/her American citizenship, and a German who becomes an American citizen to give up his/her German citizenship."

Stillstand

2004-11-27T20:32:04+00:00

Christopher's kindergarten group went ice skating on Thursday, and he was so excited by it that he just had to take Mama and Papa ice skating in Adendorf today. Never mind that we haven't skated in 15 years. That's the advantage of being a spoiled only child, you can create your own events, just like that. Of course Christopher can't skate, or rather, skates only as well as you'd expect a 4-year-old to do for his second time on skates. But he loved watching the Zamboni machine.

However, the rest of the afternoon was ruined by being stuck behind an accident on the Autobahn on the way home. German police tend to not let any traffic go by an accident site, they'd rather shut the Autobahn down completely. So we came to a complete stop, and counted 15 emergency vehicles that passed by us. We stayed put for 2 hours, then we were told to turn around and drive back to the last exit. That took half an hour to work out, since Autobahns are not designed for driving the wrong way, and then we had to find an alternate route home. So now we are all three tired and pissed off.

A few years ago we once stood still for 3 hours behind an accident, but that time they let us pass rather than making us turn around.

Horse

2004-11-25T20:42:08+00:00

In Germany, Santa has a sidekick, the Nikolaus, who comes ahead of time and cases the joint for the big guy. As Mama was unpacking the Christmas decorations this evening, Christopher said the Nikolaus needs a horse and quickly drew and cut out this. And I had another one of those moments when realized my son is both more intelligent and more creative than I.

Monkey Noises

2004-11-25T18:50:42+00:00

Looking through one of my new Bloglines feeds, I saw this about Spanish soccer fans taunting black English players with monkey noises. That reminds me of my first sports experience in Hamburg. In the fall of 1990, I ventured alone to the Volksparkstadion to watch HSV play Frankfurt, and was disgusted at how the Hamburg fans grunted like monkeys every time the black Frankfurt striker touched the ball. I've never seen HSV since, and still hold a mild distain for HSV and their fans. But I only rarely make fun of children whose parents make them wear HSV gear. Only rarely. But more often when HSV is doing poorly.

Funny thing is, that black striker was Anthony Yeboah, who later in his career played for... you guessed it, HSV.

Cleaning Lady or Jilted Lover?

2004-11-25T18:20:08+00:00

Europe and America. Is Europe the cleaning lady? Or the jilted lover? We report, you decide.

Godzilla versus PapaScott

2004-11-25T05:39:43+00:00

Godzilla versus PapaScott I fought the monsters, and the monsters won. (via nico b)

Leappad Comes To Germany

2004-11-24T16:56:57+00:00

Spiegel Online: Learning with Alpha Betty about Leapfrog's entry in the German market. Christopher has an American My First LeapPad and loves it. Maybe now we can get some German books for it.

Amok under hunting stand

2004-11-23T20:31:43+00:00

A Minnesota story makes the Hamburger Abendblatt: Amok under hunting stand - five hunters dead. The Abendblatt doesn't mention the racial overtones... the dead hunters were rural Wisconsin natives, the accused killer is a Hmong immigrant from St. Paul.

Wild Wild East

2004-11-23T18:01:00+00:00

I enjoyed talking with Anton Nossik last night after the discussion. (The LiveJournal link is his personal blog, professionally he has several Russian news sites including mosnews.com in English.) It was interesting to hear his main first impression of Germany: the "friendly" roads and drivers. The autobahns are certainly well built, and built for speed, but are German drivers really friendly? But then I remembered the t.A.T.u. album title "200 km/h in the Wrong Lane"... if that's a description of Russian driving, then German drivers must seem very friendly indeed.

When I told him I came from Minnesota, he immediately thought of the movie Fargo, and asked if Minnesotans really use wood chippers that way (if you've never seen the movie, don't ask...). He also got the impression that Minnesota is colder than Moscow. Somehow I doubt that.

Finally, he refuted one of my misconceptions about journalists. I had just maintained on the train ride to Cologne to Heiko and Gerd that the difference between journalists and bloggers is that blogger are can choose *not* to write, that they do not have a quota of minutes or column inches to fill. But Anton told me of a certain business dispute in Russia where both sides were paying him *not* to report the details, a form of reverse PR. He had no problems with that, since he wasn't intending to report on it anyway, but he was still disappointed when the dispute was settled.

Pirates of the Internet

2004-11-23T13:50:25+00:00

Since we didn't actually talk that much about press freedom at the discussion, I didn't get a chance to use the line I came up with. So I'll have to give it here.

If we're talking about press freedom in a place where it can really make a difference, we're talking about a place that doesn't have it yet. And a government interested in controlling the press is going to be controlling the internet was well. The internet runs over wires and cables, and a poor country is not going to have that many cables coming in. And big IT companies like Sun, Cisco and IBM are going to be more than happy to sell the the equipment and know-how to control everything going in and out.

That's no problem if you're going to be sending secret messages, you just use encryption and let the spooks spin their wheels. But weblogs are public messages, and once a weblog becomes bothersome, it's easy enough for a government to shut them down, or block them if they are hosted abroad.

There are, however, a group of internet entrepreneurs that creatively and successfully work around such filters. If webloggers want to deliver a message to a place where the powers that be do not want that message to be heard, they have to start thinking like those entrepreneurs.

That's right, webloggers have to start thinking like spammers, pornographers and file traders. That's the way to route around censorship.

(Insert code for distributing web content through national firewalls via a Firefox bittorrent plugin here.)

Early Morning Cologne

2004-11-23T06:06:51+00:00

I came to Cologne grateful for the invitation from the Deutsche Welle, but skeptical about the event. A discussion forum about blogging, organized for and by the mainstream media, Das kann nicht gut gehen, that could never work. However, it turned out that DW let the bloggers run the show, and so it was an excellent blogger meeting with some foreign guests. And an open bar. Sure, there were some DW types standing around with "look at those crazy kids" expressions, but they let us have our fun. There were maybe one or two journalists in attendance, so it was by and large a blogger event.

What DW offers and what makes the BOBS awards more valuable that I had expected are its language resources. Bloggers talk a lot about creating international cross contacts, but we're not really sure how to overcome the language barrier. Delivering messages in several languages is something DW does every day. By bringing together a jury to evaluate weblogs in 7 languages, they let us overcome that language barrier, at least for a moment. They are able to bring Mu Zimei to us, even though she has never before left China and speaks only Chinese.

The jury's decision will only be annonced in two weeks, but I'm sure they have picked as Best Blog of the Moment some weblog from a far corner of the world that "we" have never heard of, in a language "we" cannot understand, and that tells a story that is for "us" completely new and exciting. And that's why I do this weblog thing, to keep hearing new stories.

Press Salon

2004-11-22T18:31:52+00:00

The discussion begins. Konstantin is expanding the topic... that's good, since bloggers are not journalists, so weblogs don't have much to do with *press* freedom.

Freedom of *expression* is something that means something in Germany and the United States, but perhaps something different in other countries. Therefore it is good that DW has brought two guests from China and Russia (links to follow) who perhaps have a different experience with freedom of expression than the type weblogger.

(The event is taking place in German, therefore I'll be simultaneously listening, blogging and translating, and that somewhat slowly, and not very well. )

Mu Zimei (lucky google link) describes her experience with webloggingas a comet, spontaneous, bright, but falling fast. Not planned, not political, and a controversy for both Chinese society and the Chinese government. (The Schockwellenreiter is fascinated.)

Anton Nossik: The Russian internet has a different history, elitist and acedemic. It was never meant to be a mass medium. The authorities are not interested in supressing speech, but what is heard, what information is actually disseminated. Laws are banning press coverage of terrorist acts, or even violence in general... will audiences turn instead to the internet? They are not yet.

Jörg Kantel: In comparison, in Germany things are relatively good... except maybe in Nordrhein Westfalen, where a state government has a regulation on paper about links to neo-Nazi sites. Can a mere link be illegal? Otherwise, there have been copyright and trademark conflicts (Novitel). Impressungspflicht (identifcation of publisher), does it apply to webloggers (who do not have a business address for their blog)?

Question from Konstantin: Do the technological possibilities of the internet fundamentally change freedom of speech? If there are millions of bloggers instead of a handful of broadcasters and publishers? Is blogging OK only as long as it remains under the radar, as long as noone listens? Jörg says no... the internet can be a mass medium and a personal medium, at the same time.

Heiko Hebig: What is the best and the worst thing to happen as the result of your weblog? Maybe something we can all think about.

Scott Hanson: Do spammers have freedom of expression?

Mu Zimei: Charity blogs: a way for blogs to make a real difference?

(And at this point the live blogging ended. More posts on the evening are here.

Greetings from the Café Largus

2004-11-22T17:54:36+00:00

I've arrived in Cologne and am at the Café Largus, site of the Deutsche Welle Press Salon on Weblogs and Press Freedom. I'm now testing the connectivity... one, two, does this thing work?

I seem to be the only one here without a camera. Sorry, no pictures here.

MagpieRSS 0.7

2004-11-22T08:32:37+00:00

MagpieRSS 0.7 is out. The date_timestamp could come in real handy for my blogroll.

Gordon

2004-11-22T06:27:52+00:00

Freehand pencil sketch by Christopher Hanson, 20 Nov 2004

Open Letter to Devil Dogs

2004-11-22T02:40:52+00:00

Kevin Sites Blog: Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1, the marine unit involved in the mosque shooting. (Remember this for the panel in Cologne tonight.) (via Don Park)

My World and Welcome To It

2004-11-21T13:37:49+00:00

Sydney Photos

2004-11-21T08:16:24+00:00

We've put Mama's pictures from Syndey onto Flickr, in case anyone has never seen the Sydney Opera. The pictures are not yet titled or ordered, so be prepared for mystery and suspense.

blogging can help smart people get jobs

2004-11-20T03:43:46+00:00

Further proof that blogging can help smart people get jobs Oh, only smart people, so that's why I've been having trouble :-)

A Simple Cell Phone

2004-11-18T20:09:59+00:00

She doesn't know it yet, but we are about to drag my mother-in-law kicking and screaming into the 21st century. We are getting her a cell phone. She's 70 years old and drives alone, sometimes at night. She needs a mobile phone in case of emergency. We'll convince her of that. But she's techno-phobic. She doesn't even like using a remote control for her TV.

We have a several old phones, so hardware is not a problem. I have a Motorola Timeport I picked up for €3 from work. It seems to be the cell phone we have that looks the most like a normal phone. The menus are way too complicated, though. I wish I could disable everything except the phone book. All she needs to do is to make and receive calls.

Following vowe's advice, I bought a prepaid SIM from Tchibo for €20, including €10 credit good for one year. All domestic calls cost 35 cents per minute anytime. That's simple enough to remember, and Tchibo coffee shops are all over to buy more credit.

We'll give her the phone for Nikolaus on December 6. We'll have to think of a way to put it in her shoes.

Press Salon

2004-11-18T09:33:56+00:00

I usually ignore award contests for weblogs, because 1) I believe that weblogs are an expressive medium solely motivated by personal satisfaction, and 2) I wouldn't win anyway. But I make exceptions for award contests that invite me to dinner.

Next Monday I'll be in Cologne attending a "press salon" held by The Deutsche Welle International Weblog Awards featuring a discussion on "Weblogs and Freedom of the Press" by Mu Zimei (China), Jörg Kantel (Germany) and Anton Nossik (Russia), and moderated by Konstantin Klein (Very Large Orange, and ex-German-expat). The salon will be "blogged live", which is where I come in. I imagine they will dress me in pajamas and put me on display for the journalists in a golden cage hung from the ceiling.

I don't see any mention of the event at DW's website, so you'll have to take Jörg's and Konstantin's word for it that it is indeed taking place.

Oldest German Blog?

2004-11-16T21:41:20+00:00

I'm just wondering, what's the oldest active German weblog? How many German blogs that were early adopters of first wave of blogging services like Blogger (Aug 1999), Diaryland (Sept 1999), and EditThisPage (Dec 1999) are still active?

I'm familiar with the EditThisPage crowd... Andrea started in January 2000 and is still going strong. I think her husband André (who worked for Userland at the time) was using Manila before EditThisPage went public, but now he now posts only once every other year, so I'm not sure he can be called active. Are there any other German '99ers?

Update: Ah, I had forgotten Martin was also among the very first ETPers. And his first post was just a few days before Andrea's.

PapaScott was an early adopter of EditThisPage, but I'm not German, so I don't qualify.

I Like the Poof

2004-11-16T17:00:34+00:00

I made the mistake of showing Christopher how to <a title="Tiny Pineapple :: Archives :: "I like the poof."" href="http://www.tinypineapple.com/archives/2002/10/i_like_the_poof.html">poof items from the dock on my PowerBook. Now he wants to do it all the time.

Norwegians now favor joining EU

2004-11-16T08:06:04+00:00

Poll shows Norwegians now favor joining EU. Think of all the oil money we can redistribute!

Rotten Compromise

2004-11-16T04:56:48+00:00

In describing the CDU/CSU health care "plan", I love how Reuters starts with the phrase "Germany's squabbling conservative opposition". The proposal has nothing to do with reforming the health care system, and everything to do with distributing party influence and power of Merkel and Stoiber.

Now, I'm all for a health financing system that does away with the payroll tax and distributes the costs to everyone, not just wage earners. But this plan keeps a 6.5% payroll tax, while individuals pay 109 per month (but no more than 7% of income). So we keep the old bureaucracy, add a new one, and the difference gets paid with taxes. Nothing about cost reduction or efficiency. Everyone loses, except for high wage earners. Is this client politics, or what?

Nico thinks income taxes are a bad way to finance health care; I disagree, but of course the tax system needs to fixed first, and needs to stop financing silly things like coal mining, wind energy, house buying, and commuting.

Finally, a last bit of not-so-subtlety from Reuters "The two parties (CDU and CSU) have historically worked together." That's like saying that the team management fully supports the coach. If you have to say it out loud, it means it might no longer be true.

Half Time

2004-11-15T21:43:48+00:00

I haven't complained about my job in a while, and after this I promise not to complain again for another 3 months.

This week is the ominous "6 weeks before the end of the quarter" deadline when either I or my employer can give notice of termination. I've decided not to leave entirely, but rather to reduce to half time starting 1 December. I had been working 32 hours under Kurzarbeit (short time), but that has now been cancelled, so if I stayed I had to either go back to full time or reduce my hours.

The prospects for free-lancing are not as rosy as I had hoped, and it looks like despite everything that the company will survive. The environment has stabilized, and my work is fun and interesting again. So I'll stick around and see what happens.

Rhonda McDonald?

2004-11-15T21:04:34+00:00

Rhonda McDonald? Japanese McDonald's TV ad (via loic)

Day at the Opera

2004-11-15T20:46:40+00:00

My wife went to Sydney for 10 days, and all I got was this digital image. She got back yesterday, at least physically. Her brain is still catching up.

worst of both worlds

2004-11-15T15:58:26+00:00

U.S. Immigration, the worst of both worlds: porous and callous.

fast food ad ban

2004-11-15T06:03:43+00:00

British white paper proposes banning fast food ads before 9pm. But aren't the worst cravings at midnight? (via andrewsullivan)

This sign means your duty as compulsion things

2004-11-14T19:50:13+00:00

"This sign means your duty as compulsion things." Sounds like a good name for a weblog.

Arafat is dead

2004-11-11T04:49:13+00:00

Arafat is dead. I just saw the story appear in the Spiegel Online sidebar, it was like watching history take place before my eyes. Or not.

Singles night at Wal-Mart in Germany

2004-11-10T21:49:10+00:00

WSJ.com: Friday night is singles night at Wal-Mart in Germany I've never heard of this... you, Heiko? (via kottke)

The Wonders of Astronomy

2004-11-10T18:52:38+00:00

I was just telling Christopher that Mama is so far away in Australia, that it's already morning there even though it's evening here. He then starts explaining to me that the earth is round, Australia is on the other side of the earth from Germany, and that the earth rotates while the sun stays still. That's why it's already morning in Australia. He rotates his fist as the earth while holding the "sun" in his other hand to demonstrate.

Once he was convinced that I understood, he went back to his dessert.

A Nation of Pyromaniacs

2004-11-09T12:03:25+00:00

Last night it occurred to me that a country where they let little children run around in the dark with lit candles in paper lanterns, where they put the same lit candles in dried-out pine trees indoors for Christmas, and where they have a holiday that combines alcohol and hand-held fireworks, that such a country has a lot of gall calling Americans stupid for electing Bush.

2004-11-09T11:47:40+00:00

Deutsche Nationale Regierungsumstürzenstag

One Point Oh

2004-11-09T11:41:52+00:00

Despite my reservations about the release, I of course downloaded Firefox 1.0 as soon as it was available. And lo and behold, the hesitation on bad hostnames under Linux has been fixed (it passes the request to the proxy server immediately instead of waiting for a DNS lookup).

I still don't get all gushy about a web browser though. It's just a tool.

Global Reach

2004-11-08T21:37:48+00:00

Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero told Der Spiegel that the EU could become a global power with a foreign ministry within 20 years. That's sweet coming from a politican who had his country perform an instant about-face on Iraq upon his election. If foreign issues are resolved more on the basis of party politics rather than national interest, how can te EU of 25 have any sort of coherent foreign policy at all? Right now the EU might be able to agree that the Earth is round and rotates around the sun, but only if Italy abstains. (EUbusiness - EU can become global power in 20 years: Spanish PM)

Firefox not ready

2004-11-08T20:54:43+00:00

Like Susan, I haven't been real happy lately with Firefox, which is supposed to release 1.0 tomorrow. The release candidates for the Mac have been somewhat stable, but are still worse than 0.9.x. And they stil render certain GIFs improperly, like PhotoMatt's header and the star images at Amazon, at least for me. And under Linux, Firefox chokes, and sometimes freezes, on mistyped hostnames with slow DNS lookups. Maybe it works better on Windows, but I fear the hype is going to backfire. It's not ready.

Happy Cadaver Day

2004-11-08T18:55:59+00:00

I guess it's because I live in the Protestant north, but I never knew that referring to Catholic holiday of Fronleichnam as "Happy Cadaver Day" was so
controversial (scroll to the comments). Up here it's called that all the time. Wasn't the 30 Years' War supposed to have settled all this?

But you're not white

2004-11-08T14:37:19+00:00

German For Beginners: "Whenever a person asks V where she's from and she says that she's English and was born in London, I'm amazed at the number who look at her and ask "Ja, aber woher kommen Sie wirklich?" - "where are you from, really?" I think it's the outright, unabashed, "but, but you're not white", inherent in the statement." Funny, that never happens to me. But then again, Germans were never known for subtlety.

High Volume

2004-11-07T14:29:52+00:00

I recently purchased an iPod, but was disappointed with the sound. It was simply not loud enough. I took the the following steps:

1. Applied iPod Volume Booster to remove the EU volume restriction.
2. Purchased a set of plug-style earphones.
3. Imported appropriate music (Ramones, Donnas, Ärzte, etc.).

Ah. Much better.

The Values-Vote Myth

2004-11-06T20:29:32+00:00

David Brooks (in NYT): The Values-Vote Myth "Just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?" (Via kottke)

Sydney and Hannover

2004-11-06T07:00:58+00:00

Mama left Thursday for her 10 day business trip in Sydney. So we men have to fend for ourselves for a few days. Our highlight today combines fun and technology. This morning we'll be taking the BUS from Buchholz to Harburg, then board the I.C.E. TRAIN to Hannover, where we will then hop on the STREETCAR to head for a day at the ZOO. If it rains, we'll just ride the streetcar all afternoon. Then we do the whole thing again in reverse.

With a couple of Oma visits, a lantern march in kindergarten, an appointment at the ear-nose-throat specialist, and today's expedition, the week is going to go by very quickly. Then on Sunday we'll get up early and head to the airport to pick up Mama, whether she wants to be picked up or not.

Party like it's 1989

2004-11-05T20:49:15+00:00

In an inspired moment of creative fiscal policy, Finance Minister Eichel yesterday (with the approval of his boss the Chancellor) proposed moving the German Unity Day holiday to always fall on Sunday. This year a number of paid holidays fall on the weekend, thus adding a couple of tenths to national GDP, so why not have have a holiday fall always on the weekend? Alas, the idea fell like a lead balloon full of rocks. Maybe Eichel should hire some of those Greek statisiticians to rewrite the German calendar. My idea: move Unity Day to the day after Ascension, a nominal work day when noone works anyway.

Update: Tobias thinks it was all a ruse by Schröder to trick the Länder into giving up a holiday in May. Maybe so, and the Union is all so easy to trick these days, but it still must be nice to have a chump like Eichel to always be the fall guy for you when things go wrong.

(DW-Online: Plan to Move Unity Day Sets Off Political Firestorm)

Condoms for the New America

2004-11-05T11:53:33+00:00

Lyssas Lounge: Condoms for the New America

Is Italy a Red State?

2004-11-05T11:17:42+00:00

EU President-Designate José Manuel Borroso has presented a new European Commission, without the controversial Italian candidate Rocco Buttiglione whose "unapologetic, conventional Catholic views on gays, women and the family" forced Borroso to delay nominating a commission. Now if "conventional Catholic views" were compatible with presidential (rather than papal) infallibility, Buttiglione would be a shoe-in for the Bush cabinet, don't you think? (EUbusiness - Italy ends EU deadlock by sending FM to Brussels)

Lower the Bar! Fire the Statisticians!

2004-11-05T03:21:30+00:00

Remember the Lisbon Agenda, in which the EU pledged to become the world's most competitive economy by 2010? OK, stop laughing. Germany has come up with a plan on how the agenda can be met, namely by lowering the goal, a tactic which seems to work for domestic financial problems. So instead of competing right away with the United States, the EU can start by competing with, say, Khazakstan or Bangladesh. I personally think a better solution would be for the EU to hire Greek statisticians.

Maybe the tactic can be applied to other issues as well, for example, Turkey. "Did you think we said talks would open in this century? No, we never meant that..." (EUbusiness - Germany wants to lower Lisbon Agenda targets)

Ding Dong!

2004-11-04T18:23:04+00:00

Ashcroft to resign from Bush's cabinet? We can only hope!

Mrs. Clinton Looks Like the Candidate to Beat

2004-11-04T08:12:30+00:00

The NYT:2008 Contender: For the Moment, Mrs. Clinton Looks Like the Candidate to Beat "But at the same time... there are large numbers of voters who simply do not like her, no matter what she does."

Do I have to stop?

2004-11-03T17:33:43+00:00

Wonkette: "As far as I can tell the election is still going on, but my computer swears it is Wednesday. Do I have to stop drinking now? No." Can't we get Wonkette to come to Germany for the 2006 elections? Berlin is so much more cool than Washington DC.

And The Winner Is...

2004-11-03T16:58:42+00:00

What's CNN trying to tell me here? That the turkey won?

First Post!

2004-11-03T08:17:01+00:00

Clinton/Obama in 2008!

I just wanted to be the first to say that...

After Midnight

2004-11-03T05:33:03+00:00

I kept the promise I made to myself not look at election results until after 6 am (midnight Eastern time), since nothing would be decided before then anyway. I didn't even watch any news last night and went to bed early. I was awake a 4 am, but resisted temptation, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Sure enough, at 6:30 nothing is decided. It looks like the FL/PA/OH hypothesis is going to hold. Whoever wins 2 of 3 wins everything. But now it's time to wake the kindergarten child...

Dry Election

2004-11-02T20:59:16+00:00

One thing I remember about living in Minnesota is that it was illegal to buy alcohol on election day. Nice to see that has changed. Prost. (Old news, I see. The election day liquor ban was lifted in 1991.)

What Really Matters

2004-11-02T19:15:06+00:00

Yes, there's an election going on today, but as I've written before, I'm not all that convinced it matters much who wins. However, at home we're concentrating more on the illness of Mama's 90-year-old aunt, who lives 90 minutes away in Schleswig-Holstein, but has no immediate family, leaving it to the niece and nephews to arrange all that needs arranging (at least until Mama leaves for Sydney on Thursday). My impression from home is that, when you're sick, elderly and publicly insured, the German medical system totally sucks. Totally.

Lack of Respect

2004-10-30T15:22:25+00:00

If nothing else, the Bin Laden video shows a lack of respect for the American electoral process. He needed bombs to influence the election in Spain, but thinks a video is all he needs for the US.

Switching to del.icio.us

2004-10-30T09:30:35+00:00

hebig.org: Switching to del.icio.us for quick links. An idea good enough to steal, er, I mean, use myself.

Saved Again, For Now

2004-10-29T18:20:46+00:00

As I alluded to a couple of days ago, my employer was once again on the brink of insolvency this week. And once again, they have won a reprieve, for at least a few weeks. The employees agreed to defer most of their October salaries until December, when a recapitalization is planned, a condition for new investors. In return, the company paid the rest of our September salaries today. The future of the company is no more secure than before, but at least there is a plan for pulling away from the brink, which is something to say for the new management.

The Security of Checks and Balances

2004-10-29T17:45:23+00:00

Schneier on Security: The Security of Checks and Balances "I don't believe that John Kerry, if elected, would willingly lessen his own power any more than second-term President Bush would. What the US needs is a strong Congress and a strong court system to balance the presidency, not weak ones ceding ever more power to the presidency."

Kohl Groupies

2004-10-28T10:49:11+00:00

Kohl Groupies (via lummaland)

Cursed

2004-10-28T05:31:20+00:00

Red Sox win World Series "It was Boston's sixth championship, but the first after 86 years of frustration and futility, after two world wars, the Great Depression, men on the moon, and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union." Just so HSV fans know how long a curse can last.

Freedom of Movement

2004-10-27T21:39:51+00:00

The Aardvark Speaks: The freedom of movement With Schengen, you can travel throughout Europe without showing a passport. Unless you take a night train. Or wear a leather jacket. (Or aren't European, but that's beside the point.)

Sheet Music

2004-10-27T17:46:12+00:00

Listening to weblogs being read aloud on stage seems to me as exciting as, say, listening to sheet music being read aloud while watching paint dry, but if you're into that sort of thing, Heiko and Nico were in Berlin last night doing just that. No word on whether the paint was dry by the end of the evening or not.

Bild Zeitung endorses Bush

2004-10-27T10:47:34+00:00

Bild Zeitung endorses Bush (via itw)

Time is Money

2004-10-26T09:08:14+00:00

The next couple of weeks I might have very little time to write here, as the wife is in Budapest this week and then next week off to Sydney for 10 days, leaving the men alone at home.

On the other hand, I might soon have all the time in the world to write for PapaScott. Very soon. Details as they come in.

But will it work abroad?

2004-10-25T17:45:53+00:00

Clientcopia: "It's a nice idea. - but will it work abroad?" That could almost be a tagline... (Via ameisendorf.)

Don't Hit On Him

2004-10-25T06:23:11+00:00

Who needs social software when you have a blog and an accordion? "Don't hit on the Accordion Guy! I read he's engaged!"

Marching Orders to Vote

2004-10-25T00:06:48+00:00

Why is it that any time Spiegel Online reports on a topic about which I have personal knowledge, they turn out to be completely full of shit? Latest case in point, Marching Orders to Vote, in which the Bush Administration is supposedly hindering civilian expats from voting.

Bullshit. Thanks to the fvap.gov website, it was never easier for me to arrange for my American absentee ballot than it was this year. I never had any problems reaching the site, even in September when the story of problems first surfaced (i.e. Spiegel is a month late on this).

Of course, the Medienkritiker are calling Spiegel on this as well.

Bloglines Timestamps

2004-10-23T06:39:30+00:00

I finally my blogoll working with timestamps from Bloglines, using their API. It would be nice if Bloglines had a lastItem function, where you could get the latest n items for any feed. But you can only get the unread items or all items after a certain date/time. You also cannot be sure that the timestamps are consistent. And you are not assured of getting correct XML. And the WebServices::BlogLines perl modules barfs if no items are returned. But once you work around all that, it's pretty easy. I'll post perl code once I get it cleaned up.

Update: It seems the timestamps from Bloglines are buggy, they use a 12-hour close but don't include AM/PM. So all timestamps get interpreted as being before noon GMT.

Telegraph | News | Guardian calls it quits in Clark County fiasco

2004-10-22T19:11:39+00:00

Telegraph: Guardian calls it quits in Clark County fiasco (Via Bite The Wax Tadpole.)

If They Come to Protect You, Run

2004-10-22T18:50:05+00:00

Shark Blog points to an article on the book "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures", chronicling UN peacekeeping failures. "If blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs." I'll have to remember this next time someone here tells me the UN can and should solve the world's problems.

Real Stars

2004-10-22T18:27:43+00:00

Thanks to vasili, we now have some real gold star stickers for Christopher. As you see, we've already used all the big ones. They glitter so much, they are nearly impossible to scan or photograph.

Liquidity Squeeze

2004-10-21T17:06:03+00:00

Last night my employer issued an Ad-Hoc Release that we are suffering from a Liquiditätsengpass. In English, I guess that means we won't be seeing our salaries anytime soon. No news to us, but it was news to the stock market.

Same Applies to Bayern München

2004-10-21T03:20:33+00:00

Comment in Political Animal: "I really really really hate the Yankees. More than brussel sprouts. More than wet socks. More than ice cream headaches. A lot."

Enough with the US election

2004-10-19T16:43:01+00:00

Bjørn Stærk: Enough with the US election "You get a sense of how intertwined European and American culture has
become, and how much of a one-way relationship it is, when you look at
the amount of press coverage the US election receives here. It may seem
obvious to my American readers that their election should be covered in
full detail all across the world, but it's not. You're not that important. But we care anyway... On October 18, Norway's online newspapers published 52 articles mentioning John Kerry. On the same day, they published 18 articles mentioning our own prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik." It's just as bad in Germany.

Dead-End Job

2004-10-19T07:33:09+00:00

Maybe it's just me, but I would think that being laid off by General Motors would be a good chance for me to take stock of my life, leave a dead-end industry, and find a real job. Although I guess the fact that I was working for General Motors would be a sign I hadn't thought real hard about my future. Like, say, the wildcat strikers at the Opel factory in Bochum.

Then again, my present job doesn't really have much of a future either, so what do I know?

CSS tinkering: font size

2004-10-18T20:09:18+00:00

Webpropaganda: CSS tinkering: font size 62.5%, the magic number. Finally ems make sense. Immediately inserted here.

U better get busy if U wanna get paid

2004-10-18T17:13:06+00:00

If anyone is keeping track, I still haven't received my September salary (although the firm has made a €1000 partial payment to each employee). Late payments... this is starting to feel like free-lance work, only without the freedom.

Spampot

2004-10-18T07:57:24+00:00

Last Tuesday I quietly installed MT-Blacklist and opened comments on all of my previous blog entries. The first spam arrived the next day. The statistics for the past 5 days are:
* Comment spams blocked: 285
* Comment spams moderated: 3 (of which 2 were truly spam)
* Comment spams posted: 0

Sticker Shock

2004-10-17T08:20:50+00:00

Haughty Bill: "Yesterday I stopped into one of the local liquor stores to buy a bottle of Merlot wine. My favorite. OMG! Sticker shock! They want $10.50 for my $5 bottle of wine in Germany." Not everything is better in the States...

Conquerors or Liberators Revisited

2004-10-17T08:05:42+00:00

Allow me to repeat myself: "Even in April (2003) it was clear that an troops would be in Iraq for at least two years, well past the 2004 election. And I also remember thinking back then that, from his timing of the war, President Bush was handing the fate of his re-election away from US voters and to the Iraqi people. If, say, in the summer of 2004 the occupation is going badly, the Iraqis do not feel liberated and 'better off than they were 4 years ago', if US soldiers are still killing and being killed, Iraq would then dominate the US election and Bush would be like LBJ in 1968, namely toast.... Or, as Buzz Machine commented: 'The war was a success. But the peace is hell.'"

It looks like I was wrong about LBJ and toast, but the peace has turned out to be more hellish that I ever imagined.

Lantern March

2004-10-16T13:50:52+00:00

Last night we hosted a Laternenumzug for Christopher's Tagesmutter, even though Christopher has now graduated to Kindergarten and no longer attends day care. We had about 16 parents and 8 children marching in the drizzle through the fields with paper lanterns. We set up hay bales and some Halloween decorations in the carport, and offered pretzels and warm drinks. The kids played in the back yard, pretending it was not dark. Most of Heidi's kids are younger than 3, so most of the guests headed home by 8 pm. A hard core stayed a little longer.

Butt Out!

2004-10-16T08:37:45+00:00

Adventures of an American Girl in Germany: What Arrogance "The Guardian, a UK newspaper, has an article urging Europeans concerned about the US Election to write a personal letter to people living in Clark County, Ohio..." Like she says, butt out! Or would you like our CIA to influence your election?

Chilling out the Burger King

2004-10-16T07:04:43+00:00

code: theWebSocket: Chilling out the Burger King "One of my patients had been having it his way down at the local Burger King when the elephant joined him for lunch and made itself at home on his chest..." I love it when Alwin talks shop.

Morality

2004-10-15T04:11:49+00:00

"Europeans insist that they're morally superior to Americans" asserts a recent article at Chicago Boyz. Is that true?

(That's a double question. For extra credit in the comments, answer both.)

From My Spam Folder

2004-10-14T17:55:27+00:00

We would like to introduce our new-born site, where you can shop around most wanted and needed items in your life. Our weapon section has wide range of hard-to-find machine guns, silencers, armour-piercing ammos and others.

First of all, let's check our 3 top-selling items:

1. Russian surface-to-air missle SA-14 "Gremlin" (upgraded analog of SS-16 "Strela") from our supplies in Kazakhstan.
Due to high demand, it takes about 4 weeks to backorder that item.
Weight is 10,2 kg., lenght - 1427 mm. You can make a huge party and you can have tons of fun launching your "Gremlin" with your buddies.
2. Israeli bestselling submashine-gun "Tavor" 5.56" (upgraded analog of 7.65" "Uzi"), comes with 2 full clips of standart ammo + bonus one clip of armour-piercing ammo.
3. Russian booby trap made in 5 versions:
- a bottle of Jim Beam (200 grammes of C4 inside),
- a can of Budlight beer (150 grammes of C4 inside),
- a Barbie-doll (100 grammes of C4 inside),
- a cell phone (50 grammes of C4 inside),
- a lighter Zippo (25 grammes of C4 insid

You can take one with you to the school or college and have alot of fun with your buddies. Buy more than 10 pieces of booby traps, and we upgrade C4 to C4+ for free.
(C4+ can not be detected in airports or any other areas).

Also we have our Dutch-based shop where you can buy some drugs to make your life more wonderful and funny. We have wide selection of Ganzha, Crack, both synthetic and natural Heroin. And our prices are affordables for everyone.

If you want to buy anything from us, just visit our site, contact administrator and get full price-list. We accept all major credit cards, wire transfers and money orders. Please ask for details if you want to use Western Union or Moneygram money transfers.

P.S. Due to our government laws all items from our shop can be sold only to 18+ aged people. We can ask you for age verification before shipping.

(No URL was given, just a reference to an ISP which I have not included.)

Kitsch

2004-10-14T17:23:32+00:00

hebig.org: Kitsch. Soon available in black velvet :-).

Fahrenheit 11/2

2004-10-14T15:41:27+00:00

In a blatent attempt to influence the US Presidential election, the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11 will shown on television on Election Day. German and Austrian televsion, that is (Pro7/Sat1 and ORF).

Except that Germans and Austrians can't vote in American elections. And US expat voters will have had to have sent in their absentee ballots long before the film is aired. So what's the point?

(Correction: the film will be shown on 1 November, not 2 November. The Netzitung article thorte cited was unclearly worded.)

Bloglining

2004-10-13T19:49:19+00:00

If anyone cares, the blogroll published here is now taken from my Bloglines account, since that's where I do 90% of my reading these days. I can't pull timestamp information from Bloglines (yet), so the last-updated times are still from Blogrolling and blo.gs. Since the URLs often don't match among the three services, the timestamp may be missing or plain wrong. It's a work in progress.

German Troops for Kerry?

2004-10-13T06:08:06+00:00

FT.com: Germany in rethink on Iraq force deployment "Germany might deploy troops in Iraq if conditions there change, Peter Struck, the German defence minister, indicated on Tuesday in a gesture that appears to provide backing for John Kerry, the US Democratic presidential challenger." (via Mark A. R. Kleiman)

The Dark Monk

2004-10-13T05:43:23+00:00

It will go unnoticed outside of Germany, but yesterday Friedrich Merz resigned all of his party leadership positions in the CDU. Merz was the CDU fiscal and economic policy expert, and developed the CDU 3-rate tax reform plan. He was shoved aside as party faction leader by Merkel after the 2002 election.

His departure is a sign of the increasing Stoiberization of the CDU, away from concrete policy and towards coddling client voters (commuter subsidy, home-owner subsidy) and emotional polarization (Bundeswehr as domestic police, petition on Turkey). If the Union fails to gain power in 2006, it will be symbolic of the Union's failure to take advantage of Schröder's mid-term weakness.

Merz had a unique media presence. He's short and slightly balding, and had a habit of slightly bowing his head and looking up at the camera. It made him look like an evil monk, something out of The Name of the Rose. It distracted from his usually clear and consistent positions. German politics will be less interesting, and the Union worse off, without him.

Coconut

2004-10-12T04:11:46+00:00

Christopher learned a song about coconuts at kindergarten, and wanted to see for himself what's inside. (For Sybille, who last night requested more Christopher content.)

2004-10-12T02:47:19+00:00

Merkel and Stoiber finally agree on something. Union party leaders call for petition against EU membership for Turkey. Jim calls this "mobbing at the highest level" and wonders:

"What comes next? 'The Ugly Turk'? Should we buy our produce only from the Dutch? Will the crescent have to be worn on clothing?" (translation mine)

No, it won't come to that, but the campaign does evoke ugly emotions. One can be for or against Turkish membership, but the issue belongs in parliament, not on the street. At a time when far-right parties are making gains at the polls, I'd expect democratic parties to do better than try to ride on their coattails. Shame on CDU/CSU.

Voluntary Breath Test

2004-10-11T22:38:58+00:00

This evening was a rather subdued Blog Meeting in Hamburg. Good thing that it was subdued, since the police had set up a control check on my way home. So how voluntary is a voluntary breath test in Germany anyway?

Game 4 ALDS

2004-10-10T07:08:56+00:00

Game 4 ALDS: Yankees 6, Twins 5, 11 innings, Yankees win the series.

I actually stayed up and watched most of this game on the mlb.com video stream. As an afternoon game, it started at 10:30 pm German time, and I thought it might be my last chance to see Johan Santana pitch this year. Turned out I was right. Santana wasn't at his best, having had only 3 days rest, but had a few great moments. I didn't make it until the end, though. I went to bed at 2:30, after 10 innings, so I didn't see the bitter end. Sierra's tying home run in the 8th was bitter enough.

Game 3 ALDS

2004-10-09T05:02:32+00:00

Game 3 ALDS: Yankees 8, Twins 4

No Exorcism

2004-10-08T18:33:11+00:00

Red Sox fans rooting for Yankees?!? "I don't want to play the Twins. There is no exorcism there."

Slash My Permalinks

2004-10-08T18:10:34+00:00

One of the puzzles I needed to solve when switching back to Movable Type was how to keep my permalinks. Actually, most of the permalink was easy, thanks to Mark Pilgrim's cruft-free URLs. The problem was the slash at the end.

I've forgotten where, but somewhere I read that cool links end with a slash, since the URI is then a directory and it doesn't matter what filetype (if there is indeed a file at all) contains the page, the URI won't change. However, MT doesn't differentiate between the permalink and the filename that it saves. If you try to set MTEntryPermalink to a directory, MT tries to write to the directory instead of a file, which of course fails.

One approach is to set MTEntryPermalink to blah-blah/index.html, and write a one-line global filter plugin to delete the filename from every instance of MTEntryPermalink in all templates. I tried it, but it's a pain to add an attribute to all those instances, and the trackback data was still wrong.

A better approach is Dave Dribin's patch to MT.pm so you can set MTEntryPermalink to a directory, and have MT save the template to a file index.html (or index.whatever). That's what I'm doing now, but of course the problem with a patch is that it's a patch, and you have to remember to re-apply it when MT 4.0 or 3.2 or 3.112384 is released. But maybe the same thing can be accomplished with the new plugin architecture in MT3. Stay tuned.

Game 2 ALDS

2004-10-07T04:43:25+00:00

Game 2 ALDS: Yankees 7, Twins 6, 12 innings The Twins went ahead in the top of the 12th, but lost it.

New Motor

2004-10-06T18:57:13+00:00

If you're reading this, then PapaScott is running on a spanking new installation of Movable Type. Because when you like tinkering with old cars, you sometimes have to change the motor, just to see what happens. Things are mostly working, but I have a few bolts left over I don't know what to do with. I'll just set them aside for now...

Game 1 ALDS

2004-10-06T05:02:30+00:00

Game 1 ALDS: Twins 2, Yankees 0 Maybe the Twins didn't want home field advantage in the playoffs. Maybe they wanted to play the Yankees.

jobs are for chumps

2004-10-05T05:10:44+00:00

jobs are for chumps I've had careers like that...

Weblogs and Politics, Part 1

2004-10-05T04:10:52+00:00

Nico wants German bloggers to start blogging more politics and give more opinions... and not necessarily the US election. Well, I'm not a German blogger, just a blogger in Germany, but here's a start.

Health insurance: fixed premiums (Kopfpauschale) or universal insurance based on income (Bürgerversicherung). All parties agree that the current system based on wages needs reform. However, merely extending the system to include more types of income is a half-hearted reform. Health care is too important to be a rich vs. poor issue. Everyone deserves the same care, all the time. Of course the costs need to be distributed fairly. The state already has an mechanism for distributing costs... the income tax system. The health care system needs to be decoupled from income, otherwise when we have a boom-and-bust economy, we'll also have boom-and-bust health care. I don't want my heath care to bust. Ever.

Any Day Now

2004-10-05T04:10:39+00:00

Still no paychecks for September. We're supposed to be getting paid any day now. I guess that makes us creditors.

Actually, we get paystubs, since being Germany, paychecks are direct deposited. But no paystubs either, meaning the money hasn't yet been transferred, and the money always takes 2 or 3 days to hit the bank.

Alexanderplatz

2004-10-04T19:10:26+00:00

On our first afternoon in Berlin, we didn't hit any of the tourist spots. Instead we went to Alexanderplatz, one of the ugliest spots on the face of the earth. Alexanderplatz was an eyesore even in DDR times, being an epitome of socialist architecture. Nowadays it's not just an eyesore, but dirty, rundown, and under construction. The only redeeming feature is the funky world clock where you can read the time in such places as Pyongyang and Vladivostok.

But it has a special place in our hearts. In April 1985 we were in Germany for our church wedding, and we spent a few days in Berlin to present ourselves to my in-laws, East and West. One afternoon we slipped over to the East by ourselves, and ended up on the patio of a high-rise hotel on Alexanderplatz, drinking beer in the sun at 60 DDR-Pf (about 10 US cents) per 0.5 liter and talking nonsense with some medical school dropout who wanted to somehow move west.

This was our second or third day in East Berlin, and having exchanged for 25 East Marks each day, there was no way we could drink our way through our DDR currency. So we went shopping at the department store, and bought dishes. And a East German flag. And some beer openers, engraved with the price: EVP 0,15. I still have one.

There's still a high-rise hotel, although they don't seem to have a patio with a beer garden. But there's a self-service kiosk with tables outside across the street, next to the world clock. Beer is now 2.20, plus deposit. We stopped for a half an hour, wondered where the past 20 years had gone, and watched the world go by. Noone stopped at our table wanting to move west.

A Circle in Hell

2004-10-04T05:10:29+00:00

The Washington Monthly:"There's another circle in hell reserved for people who insist on infecting every computer-related thread with vapid Macintosh boosterism." (In the comments, past several dozen non-useful "buy a Mac" suggestions.)

I Spit On Your Grave

2004-10-03T18:10:55+00:00

Stone near the Reichstag in Berlin marking former location of the Berlin Wall.

National Day

2004-10-03T18:10:28+00:00

We were in Berlin sans Christopher over the weekend, as Mama had a gala event to attend with spouse. On Saturday we took in some of the sights. At the Reichstag, the Volksfest for the national holiday on 3 October was already underway. There was a stage with Schlager music, booths with grilled and fried junk food, and lots of trinkets for sale. On the Reichstag lawn dozens of people were playing something that looked like a cross between bocce ball and ring toss. No security of any sort was noticeable. The sun was out, weather was gorgeous, and I could think of no better atmosphere for a national holiday.

Presidential debate audio torrent

2004-10-03T05:10:03+00:00

First Presidential Debate Torrent Audio recorded from NPR, 93MB mp3 (Via Too Much News)

The Great Debate

2004-09-30T20:09:51+00:00

No, I won't be staying up to watch The Great Debate at 3 am German time. I'm totally unenthused by Kerry (of the 4 main Democratic candidates, I think he was about 4th best), but I already know what I think of Bush. My mind is made up, so the debate won't influence me one way or the other... unless, of course, Kerry turns out to be the Manchurian Candidate with Angela Lansbury manipulating his brain. (With that hair, you can't really tell.) But I'm sure the blogosphere will let me know if that's the case without my having to watch the debate live.

Windows Versus the World

2004-09-30T17:09:42+00:00

Daring Fireball: "there's very little doubt in my mind now that 'desktop Linux' market share is going to surge past the Macintosh into second place.... (Not that) this (is) bad news for Apple... I think the market for desktop Linux - both in homes and corporations - is very different than the market Apple is targeting. Rising desktop Linux market share comes at the expense of Windows' market share, not the Mac's."

The Catch

2004-09-30T03:09:43+00:00

50 years ago: The Catch by Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series

Tony Blair Does Monty Python

2004-09-29T20:09:50+00:00

Winds of Change.NET: Tony Blair Does Monty Python at the Labour Party conference: "And the daftest thing said about New Labour is not the usual 'What have the Romans ever done for us?'..."

Any Questions?

2004-09-29T14:09:46+00:00

I haven't posted about my job in a while. Let's see, my laid-off colleagues are now gone, those of us who remain are being absorbed into a new department, our responsibilities are being cut down to a bare minimum, the majority of the employees agreed to a voluntary pay cut (I didn't), the business manager has been kicked upstairs, the chairman has announced his resignation, the September paychecks are late, and we have no word on what will happen next.

That's enough about work.

Seeing Stars

2004-09-29T01:09:32+00:00

Interestingly, my post on Stars generated a number of mails from my non-virtual community, er, I mean from friends and relatives, with suggestions on where to find star stickers (with Christmas decorations) and wondering if I was really serious about reforming German education with sticky bits of glossy paper.

So to clarify, the post was written with tongue in cheek. My experience with German education is zero, other than what is reported in the media, and all I really know is that children start first grade with a paper cone full of toys and candy, and come out 10 or 12 or 13 years later with an Abitur or an apprenticeship. I have no idea what happens in between.

I use the writing in my weblog to experiment, to try new points of view, to strike poses, to distract myself from the real world. The viewpoints expressed here may have no basis in reality. I don't always tell the truth, but I never lie. The posts here are a mixture of fact, fiction and imagination, and the recipe is different every day. Enjoy the ride.

Showing Up

2004-09-28T04:09:08+00:00

Bag and Baggage: "I honestly can't imagine what would prevent a lawyer from showing up for his or her oral argument before the California Supreme Court. If you're going to do it though, try picking anything but a legal malpractice case..."

Stars

2004-09-27T21:09:07+00:00

I think I have discovered a reason for the poor showing of Germany in recent international studies of education systems.

We're trying to encourage Christopher to, ah, keep his bed dry at night, with only partial success thus far. Last week I had the idea to reward him with a gold star on his calendar for every successful night. Christopher thought it was a wonderful idea (especially after Mama said he could redeem 3 stars for a present).

However, none of the stationery shops I checked in Hamburg carried gold star stickers. They had plain white square stickers, or colored dots, but no stars. How can a child feel rewarded at school, at church, or wherever without being able to earn gold stars for attendance, good homework, or whatever? Where is the motivation to succeed? Is the only motivation to avoid mistakes, to avoid red marks? Is there no positive reinforcement?

While I couldn't find any star stickers, I did find multi-colored star-shaped confetti. We have to supply our own glue, but it's working quite nicely. We've haven't had a damp night since we started awarding stars, and Mama already has to redeem her first present.

Mandrakesoft Wins One Million Euros Contract

2004-09-27T17:09:26+00:00

LWN: Mandrakesoft Wins One Million Euros Contract "Mandrakesoft has won a 1 million euros three-year contract to help create a highly secure Linux based solution for the French Ministry of Defense. Part of a five member consortium, the project will take a Linux based solution to CC-EAL5 (Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5)."

Spelling mistakes

2004-09-27T08:09:54+00:00

Crooked Timber: Cat Stevens denied entry because of spelling mistake Just because you give the government all your data doesn't make the government smart enough to know how to use it.

Vowe's Law

2004-09-27T08:09:22+00:00

vowe: "Bluetooth may look interesting but a plain old cable is always better. And you have to hook up everything anyway since all of these devices need power. How often are they fully charged and will operate longer than you need them? Not very likely, according to Murphy's Law."

Tuna Casserole

2004-09-27T05:09:34+00:00

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook "Tuna Casserole. Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish. Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light." (Via Burningbird.)

Wouldn't It Be Nice

2004-09-26T10:09:07+00:00

I'm feeling hopeful. The random lyrics are now Wouldn't It Be Nice from Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. And Brian Wilson is releasing SMiLE this week.

Kerry is toast

2004-09-25T19:09:36+00:00

When neither side deserves to win, the advantage goes to the incumbent. And with that out of the way, we can ignore 99% of the blather to come for the next 6 weeks.

Penguin Suit

2004-09-25T12:09:06+00:00

I spent the morning renting a tuxedo, something I do every 10 years or so. No, noone I know is getting married. Mama's firm sponsors a charity which is having a benefit gala in Berlin next weekend, and her boss has made it clear that it would be very good if she were to attend. So we get to go to Berlin and watch millionaires spend money.

Our first attempt in Hamburg yesterday was a failure, as the shop was too small and didn't do alterations, which left us both in a sour mood. Last night I searched Google and found Brautmoden Haupt in Hamburg Barmbek. Frau Haupt had my size, was willing to cut several centimeters from the arms and legs, and had me set up in a half an hour.

This adventure of the tuxedo is going to cost me in all 4 trips into the city (the failed trip yesterday, the successful trip today, the pick-up on Thursday, and the return next Monday), but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to make my wife look good. As if I have a choice.

Chicago Boyz

2004-09-25T00:09:48+00:00

Chicago Boyz: Why you should vote even when all the choices suck "Staying home just leads them to think that you don't care and won't resist when your money is taken and used for the benefit of voters."

Eric Schrock's Weblog

2004-09-23T07:09:16+00:00

Why Solaris and Linux can't be unified (Via Hack the Planet)

MarsEdit

2004-09-22T04:09:09+00:00

Ranchero Software: MarsEdit 1.0 Beta. Weblog editor for OS X from Brent Simmons. Freaky name. Funky software. Free if you've bought NetNewsWire.

Corn on the Cob

2004-09-21T18:09:37+00:00

Our German-American meal on Sunday was Westphalian ham, boiled potatoes and corn on the cob.

Twins Clinch AL Central

2004-09-21T02:09:08+00:00

Yahoo! Sports - MLB - Twins 8, White Sox 2: Twins Clinch AL Central

Democracy Rules

2004-09-20T16:09:05+00:00

1. The voters are always right.
2. If the voters make a bad choice or no choice at all because all the "good" choices suck, don't blame the voters. See Rule Nr. 1.

Brown Nosing

2004-09-19T19:09:32+00:00

State elections today in Brandenburg and Sachsen, and the media at home and abroad is bemoaning that the German far right makes poll gains. While the results of the far-right (9% in Sachsen, 6% in Brandenburg) make nice headlines, they miss the point. The real story is the failure of both main parties to maintain their ground. In both Sachsen (CDU 41.9, SPD 9.5) and Brandenburg (SPD 32.1, CDU 19.4), the two Volksparteien combined for barely over 50%. Neither Schröder nor Merkel/Stoiber/Koch have the confidence of voters in the east.

The big winners were the post-Communist PDS, finishing strong second in both contests. Does this foreshadow a return of the PDS to the Bundestag in 2006, tipping the result to deny victory to both SPD and Union?

As for the far right, they've always been utterly incompetent at parliamentary work, so expect the factions to self-destruct sooner than later. The worst thing is that this result entitles the fringe parties to increased state financing, which is based on voter counts. Not that the main parties would ever agree to reform their finances and eliminate such state subsidies. They themselves are too dependent on them.

Playboy Mirror

2004-09-19T18:09:29+00:00

Via Photo Matt: Open Source projects like Apache and FreeBSD are mirrored by Playboy Enterprises. Yes, that Playboy.

Closed For Ever?

2004-09-19T15:09:37+00:00

Is MetaFilter permanently closed to new users? I've been trying off and on for several months to sign up, and keep getting told that signups are closed.

I was reminded of this when I saw Karl's post on the death of Johnny Ramone.

End of Ladenschluss As We Know It

2004-09-19T14:09:20+00:00

Round the clock shopping in Germany? Bild am Sonntag is reporting that a bill to be introduced in the Bundesrat would transfer control of shop hours from the federal government to the states . Such a bill almost certainly pass the Bundestag as well, since both major parties support it. Ten of the 16 German Länder would probably then do away with restrictions on shop hours altogether Mon-Sat, while keeping the ban on Sundays.

I'll believe it first when I see it, but labor unions certainly have less influence on state goverments than on the national Red/Green coalition, so it could actually happen.

Back In Germany

2004-09-18T18:09:51+00:00

We've returned from our getaway on Tegernsee, which seems to be the Munich equivalent of the Alster, with the same high real estate prices, except that it's outside the city, not right in it. Very poor traffic planning, there were always traffic jams. Lots of private clinics though. It must be the dream of every German doctor to open a private clinic on Tegernsee.

This is the first time I've spent any time in Bavaria (outside of Munich, which according to the Munichers I know is not part of Bavaria at all, despite being the Bavarian capital). Maybe it's just the north German prejudices that I've picked up, but it didn't feel very German at all. It felt more like Austria.

I'll quit now that I've insulted all of the German-speaking regions of Europe (including the Swiss, by not mentioning them).

The Weekend Is Now

2004-09-16T08:09:35+00:00

We're all three off for a weekend trip to Tegernsee near Munich, combining Mama's business with our pleasure. She has a day-long physical exam, Christopher and I will be checking out the lake and the cable-car lifts.

Cost of Life

2004-09-16T05:09:24+00:00

Just to put the current German debates on health care and education in perspective, Seth reports how tuition at public colleges in Iowa is up 71% in five years. He also points to Tom and Dori, who needed individual health insurance after having lost their coverage. They found a Health Savings Account plan, a creation of the Bush Administration, which is more expensive, gives worse coverage, and if widely adopted would erode the entire American health insurance system.

Have a nice day.

Kerry on Bush

2004-09-16T05:09:14+00:00

Mark A. R. Kleiman: Kerry on Bush "George Bush is proud of the fact that not even failure can cause him to change his mind."

Help Beslan children

2004-09-15T18:09:57+00:00

As schools reopened today in Beslan after the massacre two weeks ago, Thomas Nephew mentions a couple ways to help children in Beslan.

1. www.moscowhelp.org, a group originally formed to help victims of the Moscow theatre attack, is attempting to raise $10 million for Beslan.

2. OxBlog forwards an appeal for specific medical equipment that is needed.

Here in Germany, the newsmagazine Focus lists organizations accepting donations for Beslan via Banküberweisung.

Offering Degrees in New German?

2004-09-15T00:09:21+00:00

Transblawg: "According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, via Alexander Hartmanns jurabilis, there are plans of merging the Ludwig-Maximilian Universität München and the Technische Universität München and calling the result the University of Munich. Not, you understand, die Universität München."

Spoon-Feed or Fork-Feed?

2004-09-14T18:09:59+00:00

Today is triple Mozilla witching day, with new releases of Firefox (browser) and Thunderbird (mail client) and Mozilla (kitchen sink) (which makes 9 downloads for those of us using Mac/Windows/Linux). Most interesting is the addition of RSS/Atom feed readers into ~~all three~~ er, the first two products. At first glance the integration into Thunderbird mail folders seems more useful than Firefox dynamic bookmarks, but to each his own, and the more readers the merrier.

Exact Change

2004-09-14T18:09:48+00:00

Exact change, a German obsession (via Blogeline)

Schabat Schalom

2004-09-14T04:09:33+00:00

NDRInfo, our regional news radio station, runs a Jewish culture program on Fridays called Schabat Schalom. Last week (or was it the week before) they had a nice talk on bi- and multi-lingual puns. Plays on words always involve some sort of secret knowledge to get the joke, and if you have to explain yourself, the joke is lost. For example, I titled my last post on the Tower of Light tribute in NYC Leuchtturm ("lighthouse"), which breaks down into "light" and "tower". Only a non-native speaker of German would think of calling the tribute a Leuchtturm, and now that I've explained it, the humor is gone...

Anyway, the rabbi last week explained how "sabos" were the course wooden shoes of early industrial workers in France, and when they would protest their poor working conditions by stuffing their shoes into the machines, they were committing "sabotage". In the same way, the sabbath forces our hectic way of life to come to a halt for at least one day a week, a form of "Schabat-tage". And if you choose to celebrate the sabbath by buying expensive Italian olive-oil bread, you then have "Ciabat-tage", which if you pronounce Italian poorly enough sounds nearly the same.

A French-English-Hebrew-Italian pun, told in German. I was impressed.

Leuchtturm

2004-09-13T20:09:52+00:00

NYC Tribute in Light by Keith Kin Yan (via kottke)

Ich geh mit dir wohin du willst
Auch bis ans Ende dieser Welt
Am Meer, am Strand, wo Sonne scheint
Will ich mit dir alleine sein
Nena, Leuchtturm (1983)

I'll go with you wherever you want
Even to the end of the world
On the sea, on the beach, where the sun shines
I want to be alone with you

A Guy In His Pajamas

2004-09-12T21:09:36+00:00

If you post cat pictures to a blog, you got to make sure that you've dressed the part: "Bloggers have no checks and balances . . . [it's] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas."

Mama on the Beach

2004-09-12T19:09:16+00:00

I've posted some Florida pictures (as slideshow) at Flickr. I'm still figuring out how it works.

Remember the Day

2004-09-11T08:09:44+00:00

Can you remember the day of the week of the important dates in your life?

I was married on Tuesday. That's easy, it was the day after Labor Day. My son was born early on Monday morning, the night of a killer storm. We arrived in Germany to stay on Saturday afternoon; all the shops were closed.

The Twins won the '87 World Series on Sunday, but the 7th game of the World Series always falls on Sunday. The same for the last German World Cup victory. World Cup finals always fall on Sunday, both for men and for women.

Sometimes my memory plays tricks on me. I remember the Challenger exploding on Wednesday, and the Berlin Wall falling on Friday, but both are a day too late.

9/11 was on Tuesday. I learned of the first crash at 3pm Hamburg time. The towers fell 90 minutes later as I was driving home from work, listening to NDRInfo. At home our satellite receiver was broken; we tried desparately to set up a tabletop antenna to watch ARD.

Some days I remember better than others.

Enough For Now

2004-09-11T03:09:22+00:00

That's enough of the Bloglines layout for now. It might come back some day, though. I find the layout very functional, and I may work out actual templates with a sidebar and more weblog-like features.

The trick yesterday was to use wget to get the public copy of my blog from bloglines, insert a <base href...> in the html header so the relative links worked correctly, and add bl.php to the beginning of the DirectoryIndex line in my .htaccess to make it the default page.

This was all powered by an hourly cron job, since bloglines reads my blog only once per hour. It's not a script, but a one-liner with sed. If I put the long bloglines URL into a tinyurl, it looks like:

/usr/local/bin/wget -O - 'http://tinyurl.com/5zekr' | sed -e 's/<title>/<base href="http:\/\/www.bloglines.com\/"><title>PapaScott/' > /usr/local/www/data/bl.php

There He Goes Again

2004-09-10T18:09:48+00:00

It's been one of those weeks, or actually, one of those two weeks (bi-weeks?). It's budget season for Mama, so she's had 6 day weeks and is gone more often than not, and is sometimes gone even when she's here. Meanwhile, while Christopher has surely gotten into the rhythm of his kindergarten schedule, I most certainly have not. When Mama is gone I've got 6 hours of non-stop Christopher, which is more exhausting (and infinitely more satisifying) than my 6 hours of work.

I was hoping I could at least be semi-productive during my extra hours with him, but it turns out my productivity when we are alone is actually zero. He's loud, assertive, and always wanting to communicate. That's very good for his speech development, but very bad for concentrating on anything else in his presence.

To top things off, Christopher was home sick from kindergarten the past two days. Yesterday, Mama stayed home with him, and he slept with a fever most of the day. Today, I was home; he woke up at 6 am, at 8 am he declared himself for healthy and he has been moving at full speed ever since. Another non-productive day, although it's not like I'm missing anything at work.

Plagiarizers of the world unite!

2004-09-10T07:09:55+00:00

If Anil can do a revolutionary redesign of his blog, then so can I.

Plagiarizers of the world cannot spell!

2004-09-10T07:09:04+00:00

Since I misspellt the permalink, this post is now here.

Der, Die, Das Weblog

2004-09-07T11:09:11+00:00

Nico reports that Duden, the chroniclers of the German language, have noted the word "Weblog" and are monitoring its usage to determine whether it should be Das Weblog or Der Weblog. No report if we have to wait for the next spelling reform for a decision. It doesn't matter to me, as long as it spelled with only one 'g', if only to irritate Nico.

Diana from Beslan

2004-09-05T06:09:01+00:00

Like the entire world, we've been horrified by the news and pictures from Beslan, where likely 500 hostages were killed in terrorist attack on a school. For Americans, Beslan is half a world away. In Germany we are somewhat closer, both geographically and through the thousands of immigrants from Russia. Our local paper had the story of Diana from Beslan. I've translated portions (and the fact that a certified Russian teacher can only to Germany only as an Au-Pair also speaks volumes).

Hamburg - Diana Kanukowa (23) can hardly believe the television pictures she is seeing from her hometown of Beslan. She almost would have been at the school as a teacher. "I had an offer last year. But I wanted to go abroad first. That's why I'm here and not there." Diana studied German and English in Ossetia. Since February she has been an Au-Pair for a family in Hamburg.

Again and again she points at the TV. A man with a white shirt and a machine gun: "That's our local police chief." She recognizes a distressed woman in a brown dress as the school librarian...

The terror attack in her hometown caught her totally by surprise. "The attacks usually only take place in the big cities. She believe that the town of 35,000 was chosen by chance. The attack, she belives, was planned for an annual festival on September first in the Ossetian capital of Vladikavaz. The school where the hostages were held is directly on the highway to the capital.

Her family lives on the same highway. Other than her mother, a nurse who is caring for the injured, noone has been allowed on the street. One of her neighbors escaped from the school Thursday with her 3 children, one a baby. Diana believes that most of the adult male hostages are dead. "My mother heard that from an injured victim in the hospital"...

Diana is unsure whether she will return to Beslan next year. She has applied at the University of Hamburg to study Russian and Education.

State of My World

2004-09-04T19:09:13+00:00

Three weeks after the layoffs in my department were announced, our new boss finally met with those of us who remain to discuss where things go from here. One of the layoffs was reinstated, so we have 2.25 full-time equivalent admins (1 full-time, 2 part-time), 1 specialist each for PCs, Solaris and Linux/BSD. It could work as long as noone gets sick or takes vacation, and nothing breaks. Meanwhile, the rumor is that September payroll cannot be met, so this might be the last dance on the Titanic anyway. I've got vague plans for that possibility. I've got an application in for a dream job, but I can't count on that, of course.

Christopher still loves his kindergarten, and is still excited to catch the bus each morning. We had a first conference with the speech therapist, and she had 90 minutes worth of ideas (and she was just getting started). We meet with her again this week. Funny thing is, the one having the most trouble adjusting to the new schedule is me. I'm now working 8am to 2pm, and I've got 2 to 3 extra hours with Christopher per day, and I'm not yet entirely sure what to do with them. This week Mama was away all week. Mornings are now easier that Christopher is picked up so early, but I'm still exhausted.

The new car (VW Lupo) is running fine, and we've even got sunroof weather now. I put in my first tank of bio-diesel yesterday, at 85 cents per liter (gasoline is about 1.20). Vegetable oil from Aldi is even cheaper, and is rumored to work in diesel Lupos, but I'm not brave enough to try it.

Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth

2004-09-04T15:09:40+00:00

In the same vein as Communists for Kerry, Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth "George W. Bush is no party animal... We seek to portray him as he was, and still is: a lightweight."

Twins open nine-game lead in AL Central

2004-09-03T07:09:37+00:00

Twins open nine-game lead in AL Central Is it too early to start calculating magic numbers?

Export from WordPress

2004-09-01T02:09:03+00:00

Update 5 May 2005: A lot of people seem to be using this script. Since I'm not using WordPress right now, I haven't really been maintaining it. A better alternative might be the WPexport plugin by Eric Pierce, since, unlike me, he regularly exports WordPress blogs (for students at the University of South Florida).

To paraphrase Sam Ruby, a weblog software is only as good as its export function. So inspired by Shelley, starting from a b2 export script by Bill Grady, and to celebrate the release of Movable Type 3.1, I've just made WordPress a hell of a lot better. I humbly present Version 0.1 of an export script for WordPress for the Movable Type import format.

A few caveats, apart from the usual it-works-for-me, your-mileage-may-vary and backup-your-data-first.

1. It does not deal (yet) with entries with multiple categories. I don't use multiple categories, so I don't need this, but it could be done by adding yet another JOIN statement to the SQL and some fiddling with the output logic.
2. There are a few settings that I've chosen not to read from WordPress, but instead to set explicitly in the script. If you look in the print_post function, you'll see
echo ("STATUS: Publish/n"); echo ("ALLOW COMMENTS: 2/n"); echo ("CONVERT BREAKS: markdown/n"); echo ("ALLOW PINGS: 0/n");
I.e., all posts are published, all comments are closed, all pings are allowed, and all posts are filtered with markdown. You may want to change these or comment them out to suit your needs.

3. The post slug from WordPress is copied into the key words field. To keep your existing URLs, you'll want to use a solution like Mark Pilgrim's cruft-free URLs. Note also that Movable Type uses underscores in their URLs; to have MT produce dashes automatically you'll need a plugin of some sort. Stay tuned.

3. When importing, make sure your character set matches whatever you were using with WordPress. Both WordPress and Movable Type now use UTF-8 by default, but if you're using something else, you'll want to adjust MT accordingly.

3. I'm also not yet dealing with extended entries, although that would also be easy enough to do. Everything gets thrown into the main post for now.

4. If you search the WordPress forums, you'll notice that inquiries about exporting to Movable Type are met with abuse and derision. Be prepared for the same if you actually use this script to export your blog to Movable Type.

I'll be happy to update the script if anyone cares to correct any of these caveats (or anything else that I haven't thought of). For your abuse and derision, you can see the result of the export at http://mt.papascott.de/ (temporary URL, don't go linking to it or anything).

Christopher's Logbook

2004-08-31T19:08:31+00:00

Dear Family Hanson,

Today Christopher and I drew a life-sized Christopher. While drawing we discussed what he enjoys doing (building Legos, riding bike, etc.). We also thought about what one does with the eyes, the nose, the mouth. Christopher said that one needs a mouth to keep closed at night and to eat spaghetti. I then had the idea, that one also needs a mouth in order to speak. For some children speaking is easy, for others it is more difficult. But one can learn to speak more easily. Christopher and I have decided to do that together. After all, I am a speech teacher. Now he wants to know what I am writing. I'll read it to him aloud.

Greetings,
B. (Christopher's speech therapist)

(We have a notebook with which we communicate with Christopher's kindergarten. Today's note was a follow-up to a conference we had with her last week.)

Namentlich

2004-08-28T19:08:33+00:00

echtenamen.de, humorous German names, with occupation. A few even work in English, such as the ophthalmologist Dr. M. Blind. (via vowe)

Come Out And Play

2004-08-27T04:08:07+00:00

If everyone is playing with Playmobil today, then Christopher is bringing his RCE train.

He's getting a little big for the Bobby Car, though.

Communists for KERRY 2004

2004-08-26T18:08:48+00:00

Communists for KERRY 2004

Case Modding

2004-08-26T15:08:53+00:00

Dave Winer is in Madison WI and looking forward to drinking Leinenkugel's. Nice to see they have good taste in Madison. Leinenkugel's comes from Chippewa Falls, which is also the birthplace of Seymour Cray, founder of Cray Research. A college buddy of mine who worked for Cray told me they used to include a case of Leinenkugel's with every Cray shipped. Now that I'm a sys admin, I can better appreciate that.

Carrie Tollefson, Up Close and Personal

2004-08-24T19:08:47+00:00

I haven't been paying real close attention to the Olympics, but I did make sure to watch the women's 1500 m heat this evening to see if Carrie Tollefson would qualify for the next round. Carrie is from my hometown... welll, not exactly, she's actually from the town next to my hometown. And, I don't exactly know her (she was 3 years old when graduated from high school), but it's a small county where everyone knows everyone else, so I must know her cousin or something. (And like my wife said, Tollefson is a good, solid Minnesota last name.) And, yes, she did make the semi-finals, so she runs again in Athens on Thursday. Go, Carrie, go!

2004-08-24T10:08:05+00:00

Demonstrators throw eggs at Chancellor Schröder in Brandenburg, although unlike with Helmut Kohl in Halle in 1991, they missed.

Happy Birthday To Me

2004-08-24T08:08:57+00:00

Heiko notes that PyraLabs launched Blogger five years ago. Which means that I've been weblogging for five years. I just didn't know what I was doing back then. (I'm guessing I saw it here.)

Perspective

2004-08-23T18:08:29+00:00

I've spent the past several weeks anticipating, then learning, that my job is going to become less comfortable. I may lose it, I may not.

Today a colleague of my wife, 25 years with the company, learned the results of her breast biopsy. Cancer, as aggressive as it gets. Tomorrow she learns whether the lymph nodes are also infected, i.e. whether the cancer is already terminal or merely extremely critical.

15 Minutes of Concentration

2004-08-22T15:08:46+00:00

Whenever I try to get any work done at home while watching Christopher, I have to think of an article by Joel Sponsky where he writes that it takes (at least) 15 minutes for a programmer to start concentrating on solving a problem, and that with every interruption, you have to start that concentration time over from zero. How often does a 4-year-old leave a parent alone for 15 minutes? Yes, my point exactly.

With that in mind, below is the Movable Type 3.x plugin for which I've been trying to write a front-end. It emulates the WordPress function in which you can automatically moderate a comment with several hyperlinks. Save this as MT_DIR/plugins/modhref.pl, and set $maxhref to the maximum number of links you want to allow.

Once I was half-way done, I saw that it would pretty much be a knock-off of Chad Everett's Moderate plugin, just using a different critereon for moderation (Moderate checks the age of the posting and the lastest comment for the post, and moderates if either is too old). The criteria could probably be combined into a single plugin to perform simple tests on comments not explicitly banned by MT-Blacklist.

# Modhref: Moderate comments with too many links.
# A Plugin for Movable Type
package MT::Plugin::Modhref;
use vars qw($VERSION);
$VERSION = '0.01';
use strict;
use MT;
use MT::Comment;
use MT::Plugin;
# configuration variables (TODO put into CGI interface)
my $maxhref = 4; # maximum number of links before a comment is moderated
my $reg_ok = 1;  # pre-approve registered commenters?

my $plugin = new MT::Plugin({
  name => 'Modhref',
  description => 'Moderate comments with too many links.',
  doc_link => 'https://www.papascott.de/'
});
MT->add_plugin($plugin);
MT::Comment->add_callback('pre_save', 10, $plugin, &modhref);
sub modhref {
  my ($eh, $obj) = @_;
  my $count = 0;
  unless ($obj->id) { # only check new comments
    # don't check registered comments unless we say so
    return if ($obj->commenter_id && $reg_ok); 
    my $text = $obj->text;
    $count++ while $text =~ /<a [^>]*href[^>]*>/gi;  # count links
    $obj->visible(0) if ($count > $maxhref); # moderate if we find to many
  }
}
1;

Olympic Schadenfreude

2004-08-21T19:08:08+00:00

Pepilog summed up the German TV coverage of the Olympics so far. My translation: "There's nothing wrong with saying 'you can see the athlete is disappointed', but why do they have to say things like 'that's very disappointing for us' or 'Germany is deeply disappointed with the result'? For example, in the USA when an American athlete is successful, the media will report on him extensively. If the results are not that good, they will remain silent. In Germany the successes are only briefly mentioned, but the failures are analyzed in every detail and the pain of the athletes are shown for days, even weeks."

Used Car

2004-08-21T12:08:49+00:00

After 150,000 km, my Twingo is on its last legs, needing new wheel bearings and, after a poor maneuver in the carport a couple of weeks ago, a new front bumper. Oil and TÜV inspection are also due, but it's just not worth putting any more money into. So we've been looking at a replacement, used, under 10,000.

We thought about a Smart, but we sometimes need more than 2 seats. Given today's gas prices, we looked seriously at a diesel VW Lupo 3L TDI (3L stands for 3 liters/100 km, or 78 mpg). However, they are hard to find used, and come at a pretty premium to their less efficient cousins. We expanded our search to all diesel Lupos, found an SDI nearby with a foldback sunroof (very important :-)), and signed the contract today. By Friday I'll be driving German after 12 years of driving French.

Four Weeks for a Mug

2004-08-20T17:08:13+00:00

According to Spiegel Online, a US tourist spent 4 weeks in custody awaiting trial for stealing a beer mug (value 8) from the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. Since the student from New Mexico resisted pursuit, he was charged with robbery (usual sentence: 1 year). The judge disagreed, and sent the student home with a fine of 1260.

I take it all back

2004-08-20T06:08:53+00:00

After saying that that I hadn't heard of any phishing for German online banking passwords, I've now come across three in the past two weeks. The latest involves the Postbank, and gets around PIN/TAN authentication by asking for a TAN directly on the fake login page. I assume the "login" is never successful to make you keep entering new TANs. They copied the layout pretty exactly, even the commented CVS information is in the source. If you're curious look at postbanks dot info.

Not Yet Gone

2004-08-19T17:08:53+00:00

At work, my department has been dissolved. My boss and three colleagues have been laid off, two of us will stay. The Betriebsrat tried to get a court order to block the action, but failed. I asked for a release from my contract, but was refused. I thought about submitting my resignation (which would mean giving up severance pay and unemployment benefits), which would have been due today (6 weeks before end of the quarter).

I decided to stay. I don't have faith that the company will survive, but I don't yet have a concrete alternative. Worst case, I'd be better off financially with insolvency or being laid off than with leaving. And there's a chance that things will get better. If they don't, my next chance to resign is mid-November.

This is not the "happy" solution I mentioned yesterday (that would have been a release), but it will have to do.

More Considerate?

2004-08-19T02:08:10+00:00

Neil wonders if this is really true:

On the famed German Autobahn, where there are no speed limits, drivers are faster but more considerate.

I don't know. I very rarely see a Lichthupe (blinking your headlights at the car ahead of you to remind, er, demand they clear the passing lane), but then again, my Renault Twingo spends very little time in the left lane of the Autobahn.

Light. End. Tunnel.

2004-08-18T07:08:11+00:00

It looks like we have a resolution at my workplace. I won't tell the whole story until everything has been finalized, but it looks like I am going to be happy with the result.

Lowercase Reform

2004-08-17T21:08:50+00:00

Adam Kalsey points to a change in Wired Style that internet and web are now written in lower case. Note that this spelling reform has nothing to do with politics, but what (now) makes the most sense. The Economist Style Guide is also a good source of good sense

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

2004-08-16T18:08:54+00:00

At work we're a waiting on the result of a court order (einstweilige Verfügung). I thought there was a song about waiting on an injunction, but I guess I was thinking of Losing My Religion by R.E.M. So we'll have to go with The Clash:

"Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An' if I stay it will be double
So you gotta let me know
Should I stay or should I go?"

Naturalized

2004-08-15T05:08:21+00:00

A Russian immigrant, Julia Matijass, won the first medal for Germany in Athens.

Indiana Jones and the Workplace of Doom

2004-08-13T17:08:18+00:00

I've now tried twice to write a post about the current situation at work, one week before Black Thursday. But the suspense is just too great to reveal any details. Will the bad guys succeed with their evil plan? Will the good guys triumph in the end? All possibilities are open, and it makes no sense to post any details until the outcome is known next week.

This is no longer just a soap opera, this is a movie serial. It's all the more exciting because, unlike a movie, it's by no means clear that the good guys will win in the end.

Pinellas County evacuation

2004-08-12T23:08:21+00:00

St. Pete Times: More than 380,000 in Pinellas County (FL) ordered to evacuate in the face of Hurricane Charley. The area includes Indian Rocks Beach, where we vacationed the past two years. It even made Spiegel Online

German spelling reform and linguistic ignorance

2004-08-12T08:08:33+00:00

Since I'm collecting English links on the German spelling reform, here's another: A Fistful of Euros: Sprach und Sommertheater - German spelling reform and linguistic ignorance

Hello World as an MT::App CGI

2004-08-12T04:08:11+00:00

I've been waiting for a consumer version of Movable Type 3 before taking a look at it, having been bitten by a couple of bugs in the developer version and the lack of (the now award-winning) MT-Blacklist. Both will soon be alleviated in the upcoming Movable Type 3.1, scheduled for August 31, which means it may or may not be already in beta.

Reason enough to look again at MT3 and the plugin architecture. I had an idea for a plugin, and it took all of one hour to write up. (More on that later.) But then I wanted to be able to use a CGI to set a couple of configuration variables. And there I got stuck.

The plugin tutorial says that "The best way to (build a human interface for your plugin) is to write a subclass of MT::App" without really explaining how to do that. The docs for MT::App are a bit sparse on the subject as well. There are a number of mature plugins that build interfaces in this way, but looking at them, I felt like I was looking at the blueprints of the Empire State Building, when at first all I want to build is a hut on the beach.

Finally when I was looking at Chad Everett's MT-Notifier (also award-winning) did the light bulb turn on inside my head and I saw the light. It took me 4 files, each in a different directory, but I was able to write a Hello World CGI plugin for Movable Type 3.

First we need a MT_DIR/plugins/hello.pl. It doesn't do anything except register the plugin so I get a nice link to my CGI on the MT main page.

package MT::Plugin::Hello;
use strict;
use MT;
use MT::Plugin;
use vars qw($VERSION);
$VERSION = '0.1';
my $about = {
  name => 'MT-Hello',
  config_link => '../mt-hello.cgi',
  description => 'Say hello to the world in a unique way.',
  doc_link => 'https://www.papascott.de/archives/2004/08/12/hello-world-as-an-mtapp-cgi/'
}; 
MT->add_plugin(new MT::Plugin($about));

Next comes the CGI itself in MT_DIR/mt-hello.cgi, which does nothing but call my subclass of MT::App. Most plugin CGIs look exactly like this.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my($MT_DIR);
BEGIN {
  if ($0 =~ m!(.*[/])!) {
    $MT_DIR = $1;
  } else {
    $MT_DIR = './';
  }
  unshift @INC, $MT_DIR . 'lib';
  unshift @INC, $MT_DIR . 'extlib';
}
eval {
  require shanson::hello;
  my $app = shanson::hello->new (
    Config => $MT_DIR . 'mt.cfg',
    Directory => $MT_DIR
  ) or die shanson::hello->errstr;
  local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub { $app->trace ($_[0]) };
  $app->run;
};
if ($@) {
  print "Content-Type: text/htmlnn";
  print "An error occurred: $@";
}

Now we get to the meat and potatoes in MT_DIR/extlib/shanson/hello.pm, where I say that all I really want my $app to do is print some text. I require a login only so I get a pretty header on the page. Update: I've incorporated Phil Ringalda's suggestions. The sub uri is so the pretty header links back to the proper mt.cgi instead of mt-hello.

package shanson::hello;
use strict;
use MT::App::CMS;
use vars qw(@ISA $VERSION);
@ISA = qw(MT::App::CMS);
$VERSION = '0.1';
sub uri {
  $_[0]->path . MT::ConfigMgr->instance->AdminScript;
}
sub init {
  my $app = shift;
  $app->SUPER::init (@_) or return;
  $app->add_methods (hello => &hello);
  $app->{default_mode} = 'hello';
  $app->{requires_login} = 1 ;
  $app->{user_class} = 'MT::Author';
  $app->{is_admin} = 1;
  $app;
}
sub hello {
  my $app = shift;
  my %param = (no_breadcrumbs => 1);
  $app->build_page('hello.tmpl', %param);
}

Finally, I put a template file in MT_DIR/tmpl/cms/hello.tmpl, so my class knows what it is supposed to print.

<tmpl_include NAME="header.tmpl">
Hello, world!
<tmpl_include NAME="footer.tmpl">

And no description of a web application is complete without a couple of screenshots:

Main screen:

CGI screen:

Now I just have to write a CGI that actually does something, like, ummm, what did I want to do again? Oh yes, set a couple of configuration variables for my plugin.

Update 28 Oct 2004: David Jacobs noticed some missing backslashes, which I'm guessing went missing when I reimported all my blog entries into Movable Type. Sorry about that!

18 Mar 2005 MySQL ate my blackslashes again! Crucial backslashes were missing in $app->add_methods (hello => &hello); and $app->build_page('hello.tmpl', %param);. Thanks to the ProNet mailing list for pointing this out in February and to Nathanial Irons for reminding me that I hadn't yet corrected this page.

The Great Spelling Debate

2004-08-11T06:08:26+00:00

Rainy Day: The Great Spelling Debate Another expat's view of the German spelling reform

Ooops I Did It Again

2004-08-10T16:08:04+00:00

My latest translation for Davids Medienkritik

Phish Me Not

2004-08-10T04:08:57+00:00

Seeing Alwin report a plump phishing attempt to obtain online banking passwords got me wondering. Why haven't I heard of anyone phishing for German banking passwords? There are, after all, a few million online banking customers in Germany. Probably because a password alone wouldn't get you very far. Ever since the days of 300 baud and Bildschirmtext, German banks have required both a PIN (general password) and a TAN (one-time transaction code) to conduct any business. It's inconvenient, and not 100% safe (nothing is), but better than relying on a password alone.

The modern version of the TAN is the mobile TAN. Your register your cell phone number with the bank. When you make a transaction, the screen gives you a number to call within 90 seconds. You call in with your cell phone, the incoming number is recognized, and the transaction is approved. They are no less safe than normal TANs, and easier to use on the road.

I mention the mobile TANs also because they are something my employer developed for the German Postbank. The project manager thought it would be cute to integrate mobile TANs into our bugtracker, the open source Mantis (want a patch? get an mTAN!), so the past few days I've been playing with a web service client under PHP. Cute, as I said, but not particularly useful.

WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-DEU.exe

2004-08-09T23:08:36+00:00

WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-DEU.exe And I though Linux kernel versions were compicated.

Getting It Wrong

2004-08-09T18:08:09+00:00

(Via InstaPundit) TalkLeft: Houston Crime Labs Face New Inquiry "Houston's crime lab has been reeling for some time from the discovery of numerous convictions tainted by false lab reports. It's about to get worse." Thousands of cases spanning decades are to be audited in Harris County, TX, a "jurisdiction (which) has produced more executions than any other county in America". This is why I don't like the death penalty, or Guantanamo, or the more draconian parts of the war on terror. It's not just that I think they're immoral; that, after all, can be a legitimate point of contention. I just don't trust the government at any level to be competent. That goes for any government, not just in the US.

And not just for crime and terror. We could just as well be talking about Hartz IV and Agenda 2010 in Germany.

Nick of Time

2004-08-09T14:08:55+00:00

As I arrived at Hauptbahnhof this afternoon, ready to take the S-Bahn to my park-and-ride lot, suddenly all southbahn S-Bahn traffic was halted. "Fire on the tracks at Wilhelmsburg. No S-Bahn until further notice. Passengers should take DB trains to Harburg." Except my car was between Harburg and Hauptbahnhof, so getting to Harburg would not have helped. After 30 minutes, I was ready to grab a cab... then the S-Bahn started rolling again. I made it home just 5 minutes before Christopher's bus. But I see I need to work out a Plan B for reaching the park-and-ride lot, since the S-Bahn is known to be occasionally buggy.

Die deutsche "Recht"schreibung

2004-08-08T17:08:02+00:00

blondelibrarian: Die deutsche "Recht"schreibung Another expat's perspective on the German spelling reform

Good Speling

2004-08-07T08:08:17+00:00

German grammar makes for strange bedfellows. The news publishers Axel Springer (Bild) and Spiegel, which normally don't agree on anything, have jointly announced that that they will abandon the German spelling reform, joining the FAZ newspaper as major media using the old (classic?) German spelling rules. Reformed spelling has been taught in schools since 1998, and was to become mandatory in 2005, although I'm not really sure how a government can mandate proper spelling. Wouldn't it be better for spelling to be outsourced to experts like Duden?

As for German blogs, as a non-native speaker I don't really care about spelling, but I do find lack of capitalization somewhat hard to read.

BlogGrill without Grill

2004-08-06T07:08:38+00:00

Normally I would say that a BlogGrill without a grill is not allowed, but since they are meeting in a Munich Biergarten, the atmosphere is correct, and I suppose they can get a special permit.

1st Day Kindergarten

2004-08-05T20:08:54+00:00

Christopher, first day of kindergarten.

Cat Picture

2004-08-05T19:08:11+00:00

Nena with half of a mouse, minus head. (If Lyssa can post half mouse pictures, so can I.)

Bootleggers, Roll Your Tapes!

2004-08-04T19:08:26+00:00

Firefox, Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite Upgrades Released for security updates.

Invitation

2004-08-04T16:08:53+00:00

Dear Christopher,

It won't be long now until you join us in the "penguin group". We'll meet tomorrow at 9:30 in our group and we'll have breakfast together with all parents and children. Your parents will then drive home and we'll have time to play. In the afternoon you'll then go home on your bus.

We're already looking forward to having you,
Your Teachers

Quit whining, Germany!

2004-08-04T08:08:34+00:00

As a public service, here's a translation of the post "Hör auf zu Jammern, Deutschland!" by Thomas Gigold that was requested by Heiko.

"You know what? There's something wrong with the Ossis! Last night 7000 people in Magdeburg and Dessau demonstrated against Hartz IV*. They want to keep everything as it is until... until when?

"Come on, what do these people expect? Hartz IV is right. Hartz IV is the only way that the social state Germany can continue. A way that Germany has to take. Everyone demands reform, but when it comes to their own money, no, the evil, overpaid politicians aren't allowed to take that.

"No, sorry. First they demonstrate for bananas (and then buy them green, assuming that the yellow ones are overripe), then they complain that noone has a job anymore (that's the free market that they were always warned about in school), and now they complain that Papa State has no money left to pay them for sitting around.

"And before anyone tells me I don't know what it's like... forget it. I know what it's like for a couple to live on 400 Euros a month and pay for both food and rent.

"And what bothers me even more than Bild headlines are whining Germans. Oh, back then, everything was sooooo much better.

"Yes, there are not enough jobs. Yes, the East is a catastrophe. And yes, life is not as good as 20 years ago. And then? Then tackle the problem! And don't think Frau Ossi Merkel will do any more for you. Me, I'm going now to buy some earplugs... "

*Hartz IV is the consolidation of long-term unenemployment and social welfare payments that takes effect next year.

Two Letters Gone

2004-08-04T04:08:20+00:00

Yesterday's edition of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper was recalled from the newstands because two letters were missing from the masthead. The sub-title read "Dependent Newspaper" rather than "Independent Newspaper".

The funny thing is that the independence of the FR has been called into question since being taken over by the ddvg, the media holding of the SPD (yes, the political party) which owns a number of German regional papers.

Concorde

2004-08-03T19:08:53+00:00

Christopher's favorite website is the video page at Airbus, especially the Concorde's final landing. So it was only natural that he wanted a toy Concorde of his very own.

At German toy stores we could only find tiny models for collectors for 20, but on eBay we found a shop in Great Britain that sold a model by Corgi for around 12 (incl. postage). It arrived today.

Radicati Group

2004-08-03T17:08:56+00:00

vowe net: Radicati Group. Internet analysts gone bad, or on the Internet sometimes they do know you're a dog.

Black Thursday

2004-08-03T04:08:41+00:00

I haven't mentioned the soap opera that is my workplace for a couple of weeks, so here's the latest. Workers rejected the salary rejection proposal from management, and since there there has been official silence. We know the investor insists on cost cuts and he maintains that our developer salaries are too high (hint, hint). Rumor has it that management is not taking the hint and will be making cuts in non-productive departments (i.e. everythng but development). The rumor is that sysadmins will be reduced by 50%. If that's the case, then staying would probably be worse than leaving. :-)

We should know for sure in a week or two. Our employment contracts can be terminated 6 weeks before quarter's end, so the next deadline is Thursday, 19 August. The Betriebsrat must be informed of layoffs a week ahead of time. Social criteria must be taken into account when deciding on layoffs, so age, marital status, and number of children matter more than longevity or skills. So if you want to keep your job, don't bother with extra training... start having kids!

Update: The latest rumor is that the last rumor is untrue, and that no sysadmins will be laid off this quarter. So who knows what is really up? Tune in next week... same bat-time, same bat-channel!

Blogg Topping

2004-08-03T04:08:25+00:00

blogg.de is a German combination of Blogspot and Technorati... it's a floor wax and a desert topping!* Er, I mean it's a hoster and an aggregator. And like Technorati, it's been having it's problems lately. Nico mentions his current love/hate relationship with MySQL and the Zawondny tool mysqlsnapshot. I hope he's reading the Zawodny book as well. I found it helpful when rearranging IPs for my absolutely-has-to-be-up bugtracker database. Generally, I've found that problems I seem to be having with MySQL can either be tuned away or are actually with the operating system. So don't lose hope!

(*For my German readers, this is an SNL reference, so you won't get it.)

Slashdot your comment spam

2004-08-02T20:08:31+00:00

Danny O'Brien's Oblomovka: notes on protecting your open discussion forum Comment spam? Slashdot has been there and done that. Some ideas here for blogging systems, and it solved a riddle we had at work (portscans that seem to come from high-volume websites are probably tests for open proxies, and no cause for alarm).

BILDblog

2004-08-02T09:08:51+00:00

BILDblog is a blog on Europe's largest newspaper. Nice to see some real Medienkritiker blogging in Germany.

UnNice Titles

2004-08-02T04:08:24+00:00

Is anyone else annoyed as hell by sites that implement so-called Nice titles? I personally find them to be just as bad as browser pop-ups, and I wish I could set my browser to never show them. Ever.

Cat and Mouse

2004-08-01T19:08:09+00:00

We tried to tell my mother-in-law that she did not have to come feed our cat Nena while we were gone this weekend. I mean, we were only gone two days, and cats can survive for weeks without human attention. But she has a key to the house (my mother-in-law, not Nena), so we couldn't stop her. And she was shocked as Nena brought a mouse to the patio, and proceeded to eat the mouse, completely, on the spot, from head to tail.

My mother-in-law loves cats, as she remembers the kitten she had as a young girl, but has never had a cat since her childhood, and thus doesn't really understand cats at all.

I thought Nena was being quite considerate to her guest host. Usually she leaves the head for us to pick up in the morning.

Beach Culture

2004-08-01T16:08:34+00:00

We're back, none the worse for wear. And we noticed some huge differences between the German island of Sylt and the Danish island of Rømø. On Sylt, the beaches are heavily regulated and environmentally protected. A fee is required for parking and for entry, the beach is cleaned daily, covered beach chairs (Strandkörbe) are available for rent, food and drink are available for sale, and certain fringe groups (namely nudists and dogs) are given their own areas as to not disturb others. None of this applies on Rømø, where you simply drive onto the beach, unpack your gear, fire up your grill, and start cooking.

I wouldn't consider this all that seriously as evidence of the differences between Danes and Germans. For one thing, there are geographical differences... Sylt is eroding away, while Rømø has more sq. km of sand than land. And most of those driving and grilling on the beaches of Rømø were Germans.

Beach Weekend

2004-07-30T17:07:37+00:00

Mama has to visit a location in Westerland for work, so we're combining her business with our pleasure and spending the weekend on the North Sea. It's the height of the summer season, so there are no rooms left on the entire island of Sylt, but we did find accomodation on the neighboring Danish island of Rømø. Here's hoping we don't get stuck in traffic!

Swag

2004-07-29T14:07:13+00:00

If the convention bloggers are getting swag from the Democrats, does that mean the bloggers are being influenced?

Score One for the Tagesschau

2004-07-28T19:07:00+00:00

All the US blogs I've read on the DNC have raved about the keynote by Barack Obama, but he hasn't been mentioned in any German media at all... except the new Tagesschau blog. No feed, no permalinks, but they might have something right. (No, I haven't seen the speech yet. It's in Windows Media format, and I haven't sat at a Windows machine yet today.)

Lack of diversity

2004-07-28T05:07:41+00:00

Bite The Wax Tadpole: Lack of diversity in the European press, although I imagine he means coverage of the US and not as a whole

Convention Coverage

2004-07-28T03:07:51+00:00

If you're looking for interesting convention coverage, check out Adam Fuller. He's one of the techs trying to keep the WiFi up and running in Boston, and he says that bloggers stink. Literally. (via Q Daily News)

What's the big deal?

2004-07-27T19:07:20+00:00

Matthew asks What's the big deal about the Democratic convention? "I mean Kerry is set to be nominated, so that would take like half an hour. Then they could release the balloons, have a speech and be back on the road by midday.What else?"

Well, technically the convention is like a German Parteitag, with delegates voting on personel, resolutions and positions for the campaign. But in reality it's a scripted media circus... but it's an important circus nonetheless. Being able to put on a good circus is an essential quality for a president. For 4 days the Democrats have the party have the media stage to themselves and on their terms. Americans have had 4 years to form an impression of the incumbant, but only a few months to get to know the challenger. If he can't make a good impression now, he never will.

In an American presidential election it is very difficult to defeat an incumbant. Clinton did it, Carter was a special case, otherwise you have to go back to FDR in 1932. If Kerry is to have a chance this November, he needs to put on a good convention.

(Back in the States when I was young, I was a delegate at a couple of political conventions, but only up to the congressional district level, never state or national.)

Staticize 2.5

2004-07-26T23:07:36+00:00

Photo Matt - Staticize 2.5 adopts my function bit, among other changes. Have to try this out once it's daylight here in D-Land.

Cheap rent

2004-07-26T18:07:30+00:00

Cheap rent in the big city: original DDR concrete-slab flats in Berlin (East) for 50 per month

blog.tagesschau.de

2004-07-26T16:07:53+00:00

The ARD newscast Tagesschau has started a weblog about the US election campaign at blog.tagesschau.de by three of their foreign correspondents in the US. No comments, no trackbacks, but at least they have permalinks. As Moe asks, are they just jumping on a fad, or will they also write about (ahem) German themes?

Biting the hand that feeds you

2004-07-24T15:07:23+00:00

Baltic Blog: Darwin award semi-finalist, or as the Sydney Morning Herald put it, Bear bites off drunk's hand

Solitary Confinement

2004-07-22T20:07:38+00:00

The past few days I've been setting up some small scale FreeBSD jails. Setting up a full scale jail is well documented, just run make install into some directory, and there are some nice tools to manage jails once they are running. However, a full make install weighs in at over 100 MB. Even deleting some files leaves 80 MB. That seemed to me to be too heavy... I want each jail to run just one service: a squid, an apache, a postfix, a mysql. I couldn't find anything on setting up a "thin" jail, other than the advice to "delete what you don't need".

However, I did find MiniBSD, a standalone system designed to fit on a Compact Flash card. By building it, then deleting the files not needed for a jail, I ended up with 15 MB. I needed to add some things back (pam libraries, pkg tools), but then I had a tight system with sshd and the ability to install packages. To set up a new jail, I can unjust unpack my tar, set up an alias interface, and start it up. For squid or postfix I just need two packages. Apache requires a few more.

My goal is to have all my network services running in its own jail, 3 or 4 jails per PC, each jail with a redundant setup on another machine. When a system goes down, I can use rinetd to bounce the original IPs into the backup jail... no playing with firewalls or DNS tables to get back going. The host machines have no ports other than ssh open... only the jails are visible to the outside world. You may break one of my services, even gain root with it, but you're still behind bars.

Google circa 1960

2004-07-22T20:07:20+00:00

A lot of people are linking to Google circa 1960, but in the comments to the post you can see that I am not the only one who remembers that there weren't any ZIP codes yet in 1960. Or that phone numbers once had letters.

Build your own paper A380

2004-07-22T19:07:43+00:00

airbus.com: Build your own paper A380 Or, as Christopher calls it, a Doppelflugzeug.

TypePad Germany

2004-07-22T16:07:56+00:00

Heiko announces TypePad Germany

Firefox Distort

2004-07-22T02:07:56+00:00

Is it just me, or does Firefox 0.9x on OS X distort the display of certain .gif images?

What's Right With Germany?

2004-07-22T01:07:12+00:00

And it's not even a rhetorical question. Time Europe's current cover story is on "signs of renewal in Europe's former powerhouse" (only noticed because the local paper had a cover story on the cover story).

Mere Human Beings

2004-07-21T20:07:32+00:00

Maybe next year they could split the Tour de France into two events, one for Lance Armstrong, and the other for mere human beings. And maybe German television should be banned from both events, for forgetting it's a team contest, not the German(s) against the world. Update: See also Rainy Day.

Something About Guido

2004-07-21T20:07:28+00:00

Yet another gay German politician outs himself for political advantage.

Queen Mary 2 in Rotterdam

2004-07-21T19:07:03+00:00

Pictures of the Queen Mary 2 in Rotterdam (via Adam Curry)

No Redemption

2004-07-20T03:07:49+00:00

Today is the 60th anniversary of the attempt to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944. The date is well marked in Germany. The Bendlerblock, the Wehrmacht headquarters in Berlin where the conspirators were executed that same evening, has become a shrine of sorts for the present-day Bundeswehr, and the date has been marked in recent years by a ceremony for new recruits in the Bendlerblock courtyard.

I imagine the date passes elsewhere almost unnoticed. Indeed, the failed coup is no more than a tragic asterisk in the history of the war. Modern Germany would desperately like to find a pinpoint of light, to grasp a shred of redemption from that absolute darkness. The German reverence of 20 July is an attempt at self-therapy, to forget all the horrors, when in fact the world will not forget the horrors carried out by Germans.

The plotters of 20 July were not saints or heroes, but human beings who recovered their humanity all too late. May they rest in peace.

Update: Bill, Duncan, Lilli Marleen and Webpropaganda on this as well. Most of them mention Hans & Shophie Scholl as truer heroes than the plotters of 20 July. While I admire the Scholls, I don't think the comparison is apt. The White Rose was a bold and heroic gesture, doomed to failure from the start. The Wehrmacht officers, on the other hand, were willing allies of Hitler for years before July 1944.

Outsourcing McDonald's drive-through order-taking

2004-07-19T20:07:07+00:00

Outsourcing McDonald's drive-through order-taking (via Link Feed)

Royal Welcome

2004-07-19T19:07:56+00:00

The world's largest and most expensive passenger ship, the Queen Mary 2, came to Hamburg for 24 hours, and it seems the entire city (plus a couple hundred thousand guests) played hooky on Monday to celebrate. School is on vacation, the weather was, well, acceptable (cloudy, cool, muggy, but dry), and it was a good excuse for a party. Hamburg has seen a lot a ships, but never anything like this.

We (especially Christopher) had a hard weekend, so we skipped the celebration, settling for the view from the Elbbrücken on the way to work, the television footage, and the dozens of pictures online.

Bordbuch: Long Way Home

2004-07-19T19:07:39+00:00

Bordbuch: Long Way Home Flying Ryanair to Lübeck, the long way around

Big Ship Far Away

2004-07-19T15:07:13+00:00

Queen Mary 2 in Hamburg (Heiko has better pictures)

Malice and Incompetence

2004-07-18T09:07:02+00:00

ongoing: Malice and Incompetence Tim Bray on the Senate report on prewar intelligence, and like with his comments on the torture scandal, I can't thnk of anything to add. (via Haiko) (Well, I actually saw it before, but Haiko's link reminded me of it.)

Prepare for Prepare

2004-07-16T07:07:34+00:00

Burningbird: Prepare for Prepare A look at the new PHP5 and MySQL 4.1, and what the new features might mean for non-geeky bloggers.

Trademark Problem for blogg.de

2004-07-15T03:07:28+00:00

Boing boing: "Dr. Seuss's 'The Shape of Me and Other Stuff' contains these lines: 'And speaking of shapes/now just suppose/you were shaped like one of these!/or those!/or like a Blogg/or a garden hose!' The Blogg in question is pictured only in silhouette (like everything else in the book); it looks sorta like a bipedal camel." Sue! Sue!

Spomsored by...

2004-07-15T03:07:06+00:00

The dangers of neudeutsch, as demonstrated by the German Ministry of Education, no less. (via Very Large Orange)

For Sale: One Euro 2004 Ball

2004-07-14T20:07:58+00:00

For Sale: Beckham's Euro 2004 Ball Warning: tends to sail high (via Blogeline)

As The World Churns

2004-07-14T19:07:19+00:00

We have new developments in the soap opera that is my workplace. Management finally presented a concrete proposal for salary reductions (retroactive to July 1). The reductions are to be progressive (rather than a flat 15%) and require 75% acceptance to take effect. However, the reductions are still permanent and the employees still receive nothing in return... no layoff protection, no plan for future repayment, and no business plan for the future. So I'll vote to reject the plan. If that means layoffs, even for me, then so be it.

At the same time, I've decided to stay with the company (rather than work elsewhere or go freelance) at least until the end of the year. The exception would be if a blogging company were interested in me, but otherwise I'll wait and see.

Super Size Me opens in Germany

2004-07-14T18:07:43+00:00

Super Size Me opens in Germany Although if one were really serious about suicide, 30 days of Bratwurst with Pommes rot-weiß would be more effective (that's fries red-and-white, i.e. with ketchup and mayonnaise).

Health Care Cost Ratios

2004-07-14T06:07:23+00:00

The Politcal Animal just posted a graphic showing the per captia health care costs vs public spending on health care in several developed countries.

While Kevin is talking about the US, Germany's position is also a bit of an outlier, being a bit expensive and a bit heavy on public spending. When deciding the future of health care financing in Germany, we probably should look at countries lower and to the left (France, Netherlands, Austria) for examples.

PHP5

2004-07-14T04:07:25+00:00

PHP5

Why do you work at a job you hate?

2004-07-13T20:07:36+00:00

In Germany, it's to keep your unemployment benefits (they are reduced if you quit as opposed to being fired).

In the US, it's to keep your health insurance.

Neither reason is the basis of rational planning.

Frauenparkplatz

2004-07-13T04:07:10+00:00

vasili: Frauenparkplatz

Foreign space aliens

2004-07-12T17:07:49+00:00

Lummaland: all German weblogs are written by foreign space aliens!

The day disco died

2004-07-12T16:07:43+00:00

25 years ago: Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park (via Dave's Picks)

Rehhagel snubs Germany job

2004-07-11T03:07:30+00:00

Rehhagel snubs Germany job

Center of the Universe

2004-07-09T20:07:20+00:00

As further proof that Hamburg is not only the city of eternal rain, but also the center of the known blogging universe, this Sunday we have not one, but two independently organized face-to-face blogging events: BloggerBrunch
in the morning in the city and Blog Grill 3 in the afternoon closer to Lüneburg. Alas, we have visitors from abroad on Sunday, and I won't be able to make it to either event.

99 Luftballons, Side by Side Comparison

2004-07-09T19:07:44+00:00

99 Luftballons, German/English Side by Side Comparison (via Accordion Guy)

No, not Kaiser Franz

2004-07-09T16:07:57+00:00

BBC NEWS: German immigration bill approved, but it's been in the conference committee for so long (5 years), I've forgotten what it's supposed to do. I do know that the current law (under which I obtained German residency) was signed by the Kaiser, so a reform is several decades overdue.

One Individual's Distorted Point of View

2004-07-08T12:07:15+00:00

Are You Serious? Horst Prillinger's Blog Talk Paper

2004-07-08T04:07:09+00:00

I've been using the online feed reader Bloglines for few weeks now (replacing my previous favorite Feed on Feeds, which was hogging the resources on my web server). It's fast and very usable, but I was wishing for the same feature as Matthew, namely the feeds with new entries be sorted to the top. Otherwise, if you have several hundred unread entries (like, if you went to sleep for the night), you quickly become lost and the temptation is great to Mark All Read and start over. Lo and behold, Bloglines has added just this feature, and many more. And it's still free, although I'm sure that now that it's become indispensible, it won't be for long.

How Many Liters Does Your CPU Require?

2004-07-07T19:07:17+00:00

I always knew that German washing machines were about as complicated as a PC, but WorldWideKlein has proof with an online ad from Karstadt.

Thomas Klestil

2004-07-07T08:07:47+00:00

Thomas Klestil, 71, Austrian Who Redeemed the Presidency, Dies Two days before he was to leave office.

Converting Manila Not

2004-07-07T02:07:09+00:00

Susan concludes that converting Manila is nearly impossible I guess the difference between free and commercial software is that with free software, you always get what you pay for.

Modern is who wins

2004-07-04T21:07:58+00:00

Greece win Euro 2004, playing apparently the very modern soccer of Otto Rehhagel.

Update: The last SMS from Lisbon arrived at midnight: "the fans won the match. we have to eat greek next weekend."

SMS from Lisbon

2004-07-04T16:07:55+00:00

16:38 "currently at uefa fanpark. 15000 visitors gathering slowly in front of the giant screen. beer prices very humane: 0.5 l carlsberg for 2.20. we're leaving now for the stadio"

If you're watching TV this evening, my wife will be in a group of a dozen businesspeople in white replica 1954 World Cup German jerseys, in honor of the Miracle of Bern 50 years ago today. They should stand out in the sea of red and blue.

Update 19:00:

The Capitalism of Soccer

2004-07-02T11:07:14+00:00

Slate: The Capitalism of Soccer - Why Europe's favorite sport is more American than baseball (via kottke.org)

Greece is the better Germany

2004-07-01T21:07:51+00:00

Greece 1-0 Czech Rep With a German trainer, man-to-man defence, a libero, hard work and a little luck. How old fashioned.

Can't Happen Here

2004-07-01T17:07:11+00:00

Spiegel Online: German tourist leaves wife at gas station "Returning with their camper from a vacation on the Arctic Circle, a German tourist from Stuttgart left his wife at a Danish gas station after a heavy argument and never returned. The woman was allowed to sleep on a mattress at a police station, and was sent home by train the next day." That could never happen to us, since my wife always drives. <rimShot />

It's Over

2004-06-30T04:06:10+00:00

We can forget any suspense at the Euro 2004, since Anna has published her favorites for the final games, and her favorites have without fail all lost. The prospect of Holland as champion is horrifying for German fans (according to Duden, Schadenfreude is defined as "disappointed Dutch fans; see World Cup 2002"), but one we have to accept.

Pulling out of here to win

2004-06-29T20:06:37+00:00

It looks like we're set. Christopher begins kindergarten on Aug 5. As we hoped, he was admitted into the speech therapy group in Winsen. We were at their Sommerfest last weekend, and they had already had him registered and assigned to a room (he'll be in the 'penguin' group) and teachers. Our first parents meeting is this Thursday, when they'll explain what he needs to bring (from the looks of it, each kid has nearly a complete wardrobe of indoor and outdoor gear on hand).

The next surprise was at work. I told my boss that we got the kindergarten of our choice, and that starting in August I'd have to be home by 3 instead of 5. He said no problem, no need to go part time, I can make up the hours from home. That's fine as long as we have short time, that's only a couple of hours a week. When we go back to full hours, I'm not sure how things will work.

My decisions would be easier if some choices were eliminated for me. If it were impossible for me to continue work, either because of kindergarten or bankruptcy, then I could always implement Plan B. But now that I can continue to work, I have to decide for myself whether I really want to. That will be hard.

(It's also hard to write about. We've known all this since last weekend, and it took me over a week to decide how much, and how little, to write about it.)

I Have No Goat

2004-06-27T15:06:21+00:00

Null Bock is the German phrase that describes my mood today. It literally means "no goat", but in this case means I'm feeling bored and apathetic.

While on the subject of silly German phrases, it betrays my age pretty exactly to admit the first hip German word I learned was Affentittengeil (literally "monkey tits horny"), something I haven't heard since the early '80s. (Does that qualify me to march in the Schlager Move in Hamburg next weekend?)

Top Hat

2004-06-26T18:06:34+00:00

Today we celebrated the 90th birthday of Christopher's great-aunt Annelise. This is her just before my father-in-law's wedding in 1956. She's the one wearing his top hat.

For Housewives

2004-06-25T19:06:19+00:00

Mobile computing anno 1967, at sofa

Manila: Converted

2004-06-24T05:06:59+00:00

Good News! Jason Levine's Frontier script has worked! Susan now has a working MT Import File. Jason says he'll be posting his script in the next few days, and since UserLand offfers a 60-day trial version of Manila for download (thanks, Alwin, for the tip), I'm hopeful that we can come up with a procedure for people to export their own sites. Many thanks to Sam Ruby for the A-list publicity and support.

<snideComment>Funny that a bunch of ex-Manila users had to do this by themselves, and that noone from UserLand or weblogs.com even acknowledged our effort.</snideComment>

Converting Manila

2004-06-22T14:06:26+00:00

Back in April 2002, I converted my Manila weblog at editthispage.com to Movable Type using XML files exported from Manila and a simple Perl script (using XML::Twig).

This month (2 weeks before the weblogs.com outage), Susan Kitchens found my old script and asked me about converting her Manila site http://www.2020hindsight.org (after she had painstakingly extracted her site into XML). I thought that the Movable Type Import Format would be a good target, since it can be imported into many different weblogging systems.

However, Manila had become more complicated in the meantime, and I was unable to quickly apply my script to Susan's files (i.e. I've gotten stuck), and I'm short of time. Since a number of people had publicly offered to help export Manila sites, people with a probably a better understanding of Manila and XML than I have, I decided to plea for help via a Wiki page entitled ConvertingManila. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

New Religion

2004-06-21T20:06:33+00:00

I take it back. Rooney (45+1, 68) is God.

Auf die Palme

2004-06-21T10:06:27+00:00

Our new cat Nena had a unique way of celebrating Midsummer this morning. She decided she wanted to be let outside at the crack of dawn, which at our latitude was 3:30 am. She's learned that she can wake us up by rustling through the potted palm in our bedroom. Very much annoyed, I brought her downstairs, threw her outside and went back to bed.

My wife, however, couldn't get back to sleep and went downstairs. She must have let Nena back in, because at some point the cat was back upstairs rustling again through the palm. This time she was clumsy, toppling the palm with 20-liter pot and potting soil onto the floor with a crash. Needless to say, the night was now ruined, as well as the day. Tonight both the palm and the cat will be set outside.

Auf die Palme bringen: to drive (someone) crazy.

Null Number

2004-06-19T18:06:31+00:00

Latvia 0:0 Germany After looking brilliant against Holland, Germany today just looked tired and frustrated. But look on the bright side. They have now doubled their point count of Euro 2000.

DSLed

2004-06-18T21:06:06+00:00

Much to my surprise, our DSL connection was activated on schedule today and the splitter arrived with today's post. Alas, our ISDN NTBA and DSL splitter are in our basement washroom, where I have no ethernet cable, so we can surf from the washing machine but not from our desktop PCs. I've put our WLAN access point in our entryway under the coat rack, with a cable to the basement, so we can at least use our notebooks until I can cable things correctly.

Expert Opinion

2004-06-17T17:06:42+00:00

We had our appointment today with the speech expert from Hannover. She approved Christopher the speech therapy kindergarten in Winsen, which was what we wanted. The costs will be split between the county and our health insurance. Now that the plans are concrete, I can make arrangements to work part-time starting in August and maybe do some free-lancing with the extra time I'll have at home. I'm happy that I won't be forced to leave work.

While Christopher is making improvements in areas like vocabulary, his fluency of speech (Redefluss) is still jerky, sometimes lapsing into stuttering. It will be good for him to be in a small group of his peers. He won't be starting until fall, but the kindergarten has already invited us to their summer party this weekend. They are hoping for warm weather for water games.

Where I Won't Be

2004-06-17T10:06:28+00:00

I won't be able to make it to BlogTalk in Vienna next month. I have to do the child care thing at home, as my wife has to be in Lisbon on the 4th. Her company is sponsoring a football tournament there or something.

Egil Aarvik

2004-06-16T17:06:01+00:00

A couple of years ago, I posted about the possibility that a distant cousin was married to a member of the Norwegian royal family. My great-uncle who told the story has since passed away, and among his effects was a newspaper article about Egil Aarvig (1912-1990), Norwegian politician, newspaper editor and chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. My grandmother's maiden name was Aakvik, so it could very well be that we are related to the late Norwegian politician. Whether he had married into the royal family is yet unclear.

PS: Mena Loves You

2004-06-16T07:06:08+00:00

New lower pricing for Movable Type, and fairer licenses. Especially cool is the free license for small non-profits.

Pardon Me?

2004-06-15T19:06:27+00:00

Did Holland really leave both their defense and their midfield at the hotel this evening? Did Germany really play the best 45 minutes I've ever seen them play? Germany leads Holland at halftime 1:0.

Update: Final 1:1. But a good result, and very entertaining to watch. Holland was lucky to tie, and Germany could well have won.

Tip Me Not

2004-06-15T03:06:00+00:00

I joined the Euro pool at zeit.de (pointed to by Jim, and after the first 3 days my result is so remarkable that I should post my picks here, so you have an idea of what's not to happen. I have one (un, eins, uno) point, and it took a herioc effort by Zidane to achieve that. Yesterday, for example, I picked Italy to win and Sweden to tie. Today I've picked the Czechs and Holland to win, so things are looking good for a couple of upsets.

Meanwhile Nico is complaining about the announcing talents of Reinhold Beckmann. They must not get ZDF in Lummaland, because there's nobody worse (not even Faßblinder) than Johannes B. (as in Brainless) Kerner. Meanwhile Neil is going on about the wonderful German announcers, which I guess means the British have it even worse than anyone had imagined. (I personally use a face-recognition system on my TV that activates the mute button whenever Beckenbauer's face appears on the screen.)

Grill It (Like A Polaroid Picture)

2004-06-14T15:06:08+00:00

I've been preoccupied this weekend by my wife's birthday celebration, work matters, hay fever, and Euro 2004, but I would be remiss not to mention BlogGrill in Hamburg last Thursday. I was there. I did man the grill for a time (after expressing doubt about the grilling skill of urban Germans and the equipment used). I did not introduce myself around, and thus missed half the people who were there. Next time we need name tags, maybe stickers that say "Hi, my URL is....".

The main impression I gained is that an amazing number of north German bloggers once worked for McDonald's.

Zidane is God!

2004-06-13T20:06:36+00:00

France 2:1 England Zidane (90+1), Zidane (90+3)

Update: Haiko and I did not coordinate our blog entries on this match, even though it may appear that we did.

Euro Election

2004-06-13T18:06:20+00:00

David laughs, Nico cries. In today's Euro-Parliament election (results presented between Euro 2004 matches), with less than 22% the SPD has its worst national post-war result. They have less than half the vote of the Union (45%). Maybe Schröder should think about buying the rights to Project 18 from the FDP.

What I find worrying is that some of those SPD voters are heading to the ex-communist PDS. Over 6% in the Europe vote, in today's state election in Thuringa over 26% (SPD just 15%). Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former SED should by all rights be in the dustbin of history. The failed German reunification is keeping them alive.

Sherpas for WordPress

2004-06-13T09:06:45+00:00

Shelley had a bad experience with the new WordPress bug tracker Mosquito, and Matt (among others) thought she was being a poor sport about it. Nonetheless, Shelley does have a good point. To be successful, WordPress has to provide support to users that is both effective and understandable.

Bug trackers are a subject near and dear to my heart, since maintaining them is one of my main responsibilities at work (using Mantis, the same software behind Mosquito). My bug trackers at work take a relatively closed approach. The customer communicates solely with a supporter, not directly with the developers. The support is able to solve most problems on his own. If he needs help, his communication with the developers in the tracker are flagged as "private", and are invisible to the customer. We thus use Mantis as both a support tool and a development tool, but the two functions are kept separate.

The supporter is the main link in the process. He acts as a sherpa between the customer and the developers, and decides whether the issue is a customer-side problem that he can help the customer solve, or a software problem that requires a developer (or a feature request that needs to be negotiated into the software spec). The customer doesn't really care what kind of problem he has, he simply wants it solved.

I'm not sure if this model can be applied to an open source project. Sherpas for open source are few and far between. But without them, an open-to-all bug tracker can disintegrate into chaos. Support for WordPress is probably best given in a forum rather than a bug tracker, with real people and plain language. Technical projects like Samba or FreeBSD can take a 'apply the diff and see if it works' approach, but WordPress probably needs to act a little more commercial to serve its users well.

Begging for GMail

2004-06-11T10:06:39+00:00

If it worked for vowe, maybe it will work for me. If anyone cares to send me an invitation to GMail, you'll earn a gushing but sincere compliment and my eternal gratitude. Any takers?

Update: All praise be to Phil Ringnalda, who has invited me to partake in the pleasures of GMail.

Market State vs Nation State

2004-06-10T16:06:55+00:00

John Robb: (on the killing of 11 Chinese workers in Afghanistan) "This begs the question: why are we using market-state techniques (like outsourcing work) in a location that needs nation-state development (ie. local work)? This is the same mistake we continue to make in Iraq."

Wait For Me

2004-06-10T05:06:17+00:00

The Telekom (or as they call themselves these days, T-Com) has scheduled our DSL connection to be activated on 21 June, approximately 11 weeks after my I submitted my order on 31 March. Good thing I didn't order something really rare and precious like a Trabant.

Gone With The Wind

2004-06-10T04:06:16+00:00

Yesterday's severe thunderstorm in northern Germany provided one solution to getting rid of unwanted wind generators.

Why'd You Cry-y-y, For The Guy-y-y, Say Goodby-y-ye

2004-06-09T19:06:53+00:00

The next shoe has dropped in the ever-continuing soap opera that is my workplace. Yesterday management proposed a permanent across-the-board 10% pay cut plus an additional 5% conditional on profit. Say what? Like the Sugababes say, takes more than begging to reverse my brain. Maybe I should bring my resumé to BlogGrill tomorrow, I hear there are a lot a blog companies based in Hamburg...

German 'bomb blast' injures many

2004-06-09T17:06:49+00:00

BBC: German 'bomb blast' injures many Cologne Turkish neighborhood of Mülheim, thousands of nails found at scene, at least 17 injured

Kaufrausch

2004-06-09T16:06:20+00:00

The German Consitutional Court today ruled that the national store closing law is not unconstitutional. So one of the more annoying peculiarities of German life won't be disappearing just yet. But it will probably better if the law is done away with by lawmakers in Berlin rather than a court ruling in Karlsruhe.

An argument by unions for keeping the law is the protection of retail workers, although I have no idea why they deserve more protection than public safety, health care, or restaurant workers who work on evenings and Sundays. If Germany had a functioning and flexible labor market, retail workers would be easily be able to find jobs that match their private schedule. But if Germany had a functioning and flexible labor market, the country would have a lot less problems period.

Work Less Harder

2004-06-09T15:06:04+00:00

When I first saw this graph of the CPU usage at my web host for the last month, I thought that WordPress was using less CPU than Movable Type had.

But then I remembered that I turned off a busy database cron job at the same time I switched blog software. That must explain it, since MT is busy in spurts, not continuously like in the graph.

Staticize Plugin for Wordpress

2004-06-09T08:06:48+00:00

Staticize Plugin for Wordpress Static pages for WordPress, protection against database crapout. It caches the entire page, even the parts I would rather have dynamic, so for now my held-o-matic is more of a held-o-static.

AirPort Express

2004-06-08T07:06:37+00:00

Apple - AirPort Express "Enjoy your iTunes music library in virtually any room of your house. Share a single broadband Internet connection and USB printer without inconvenient and obtrusive cables. Create an instant wireless network on the go. Extend the range of your current wireless network" 149

Dueling Tubas

2004-06-08T04:06:10+00:00

In the ongoing Old Fart MP3 Competition in various German blogs, I tried to give one to Der Schockwellenreiter. He didn't take it, so it's now up for grabs: Martin Mull, Dueling Tubas (MP3, 1.1 MB)
(Via Aquarionics) You're welcome.

Artists indicted

2004-06-07T19:06:52+00:00

Craig's BookNotes: Artists indicted for possessing biological test equipment If non-genetic-manipulated food is outlawed, will only outlaws will have non-GM food?

Gotta Broken Heart Again

2004-06-07T18:06:39+00:00

Is the sign of a good sysadmin that his network at home is a mess? Then I'm a good sysadmin. Up to now I've had 5 static addresses in my home network. In getting ready for DSL, I counted my current network devices and came up with 14. One router, one access point, 3 PCs, 3 notebooks, 2 with internal wifi ports, 3 wifi cards... wait, that's only 13. I'll have to do an nmap to find the last one. I'm not even counting cell phones with bluetooth. And Christopher doesn't have any devices of his own, yet.

Fix that 'do dude!

2004-06-07T10:06:54+00:00

American Girl om Michael Ballack: Fix that 'do dude!

Christopher the pirate

2004-06-06T08:06:57+00:00

Ronald Reagan

2004-06-06T03:06:00+00:00

I first was aware of politics when I was 5 years old. I knew a few basic facts. The president was Lyndon Johnson, there was a war in Vietnam, and the governor was Ronald Reagan. My dad worked for the state of California, so Ronald Reagan was his boss.

One thing not mentioned in the NYT obituary: Reagan's election as governor in 1966 sparked the first campus protests at UC Berkeley, and thus the entire student protest movement of the 1960s.

As a college freshman in 1980, my first and only experience as a real journalist was covering the state Republican election party for student radio. Carter conceeded before we reached the hotel.

I think I saw him once, as a blurry shadow in a speeding limo. He was in Minneapolis for a fundraiser. I was in demonstration protesting against something or other.

He was a kind and gentle man whose policies made America less kind and less gentle. I do think he helped to end the Cold War, but not through harsh threats and weapons programs, but through his human friendship with a man named Gorbachev.

Held-O-Matic

2004-06-05T19:06:51+00:00

If you can't tell from my post titles. I'm in a musical mood lately. When I started listening to Wir Sind Helden, I thought to myself that every line of their lyrics could be the tagline for a weblog. And now I've done it. My tagline is now a random Helden lyric. The script is literally 3 lines of PHP (stolen from the Hello Dolly plugin in WordPress), so I won't bother to repeat it here.

Update 27 Sep 2004 I've switched musical directions. The lyrics are now Wouldn't It Be Nice by the Beach Boys, but may return to the Helden in the future.

A Million Days

2004-06-05T16:06:59+00:00

If you've been following the soap opera that is my workplace, be assured that all is not peaches and cream. Yes, the company has found an investor, a venture capital fund rather than a competitor, so our existance is ensured for the short term and entire departments will not be rationalized away. But the investors are expecting further cost-cutting, which means management will be proposing a salary reduction package in the next few days. However, we've been in cost-cutting mode for over 3 years now, a mode that is very tiresome, and whatever trust the employees had in management is long gone. Noone is in the mood to give up anything.

On the other hand, the investor has a share in some 30 other high-tech companies, some of whom might be interested in our software. It might be good to extend away from the banking industry, which is notoriously tight-fisted and slow-paying.

Party Up

2004-06-05T07:06:49+00:00

The rumor around these parts is that the German iTunes Music Store will open on June 15. The rumor is deemed credible as the 15th is a Tuesday. Last I heard, the going price per tune was to be 1.25 or 1.49 (compared to the US price of $0.99) to cover the high costs of transporting bits across the Atlantic, I guess.

Futility in our time

2004-06-04T12:06:28+00:00

A Fistful of Euros: Futility in our time "If vast numbers of troops and truckloads of money can't bring peace to tiny Kosovo, is there any hope at all for Congo?"

Hole In The Head

2004-06-04T06:06:41+00:00

We're going on an involuntary hiatus. Something has gone wrong with our change in telekom provider, and we have no telephone, no ISDN, and no Internet at home. I'm sure that Deutsche Telekom is working feverishly to fix the problem. Meanwhile we can only be reached by cell phone or at work. Maybe this weekend we'll watch a movie. Or read a book.

Update I should have never doubted the Deutsche Telekom. Within in hour the ISDN line was up. In a few days we might even have DSL.

News Flash

2004-06-02T21:06:02+00:00

It was announed this evening that an investor has bought 1/4 of my employer's stock and is injecting 400k cash. It looks like my job is saved... for now.

WordPress and German Slugs

2004-06-02T20:06:41+00:00

I wanted to use sanitized titles as legible permalinks when I converted to WordPress, so I was somewhat dismayed on my first trial run when all the umlauts (ä,ö,ü) were thrown out. That is, a post entitled "Schröder Sucks" was encoded as schrder-sucks, which isn't legible at all. I went browsing through the WordPress CVS repository, and found that code for converting (rather than dropping) high-ASCII characters had been added after 1.2 was released. I copied the code into a plugin, and ended up with schroder-sucks, which is almost correct.

In German, the convention is to transliterate umlauts into two letters (ä=ae, ö=oe, ü=ue). The CVS code has some two-character conversions, so I added the umlauts to that list in my plugin, and the result was schroeder-sucks, which is just what I wanted. I've saved the German Permalinks plugin at the WordPress Wiki. Note that to import correctly, the plugin needs to be installed and activated before the import.

Very Little Code

2004-06-02T09:06:16+00:00

Linux.com: Perl's Tie::File module: "The second (reason I became a systems administrator) is that I'm not particularly fond of writing code. If I were, I'd probably be a programmer. As it stands, if I can find tools that work, I won't write code. (If) I have no choice... I at least want to write very little code." True. And BTW, Tie::File is a handy Perl module

Ongoing Concern

2004-06-02T04:06:22+00:00

Despite missing most of last week at work, I apparently didn't miss much. There is still no official word on whether we have avoided insolvency or not. There are all sorts of rumors, ranging from the company will declare insolvency but continue in its present form to we will be bought out and absorbed into an existing firm. A persistent rumor is that systems administration will be completely out-sourced.

What we do know for sure is that 1) the May salaries are late, and 2) short-time (Kurzarbeit) has been extended another 6 months until November. So someone is planning at least for the short-term future. And the stock price been going up (to 70 cents from 30 cents last week), so somebody might know something.

(Oh, and my knee is doing better. It still hurts, but it's now a tired kind of hurt, and I've put the crutches away. After returning to work yesterday, I now realize just how many stairs there are in the Hamburg U- and S-Bahn system. I feel each and every one of them.)

German Top 50 Blogparade

2004-06-01T18:06:44+00:00

The Germano-blogo-philes in the audience might be interested in the German Blogparade that M-E-X has extracted from Technorati. You'll probably find something new.

Hamburger BlogGrill

2004-06-01T13:06:21+00:00

Hamburger BlogGrill: 10 June, 20:00, Hamburg. See Wiki for address and sign up.

Converted

2004-05-31T20:05:18+00:00

I've done it. Encouraged among other things by a persistent comment spammer, I've now converted this blog to WordPress 1.2. At the same time, my permalinks are now cool hyphenated-titles-like-Shelley-and-Mark, so I must be cool now as well. Of course the old links are redirected... well, most of them anyway. And I wanted to redo the blogroll anyway, so that's missing for the moment. But otherwise things should pretty much look and work as before, unless you want to link a dozen times to a porn site in a comment. That won't work anymore.

Pentecost Singers

2004-05-30T07:05:04+00:00

The Uschi Principle

2004-05-29T18:05:53+00:00

A couple of weeks ago one of my co-workers told me, "Well, your wife's no Uschi." I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but thanks to the Abendblatt, now I know. Uschis are women who are "blond, naive, helpless and successful", who are able to get men to do everything for them. A Verona Feldbusch type. And there's even a book on how to be a good Uschi. So I guess I can glad I don't have an Uschi (as in Tussi) for a wife.

Simultaneous Translation

2004-05-28T11:05:30+00:00

Interviews with RyanAir CEO are always colorful, so it was especially kind of Spiegel Online to provide the original English version of their interview along with the German version. This is the first time I've noticed a online publication doing this. If it happened more often, we'd probably see less poorly translated quotes like the 'Sea of Oil' fiasco in the Guardian last summer.

Health Insurance

2004-05-27T21:05:22+00:00

My American readers might not be familiar with the concept, so let me explain how it works. When I hurt my leg the other day, I was able to leave work early. It doesn't count against any time off or anything, and nothing gets docked off my pay. And when I went to the specialist to have it checked, it doesn't really matter to me whether workers comp covers it or not, because either way I don't pay. And when the doctor recommends that I rest the leg for a couple of days, that means I get the time off work, paid. And even if the company goes bankrupt and I lose my job, I do not lose my health coverage. I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for health care. That's how it works.

2004-05-27T08:05:53+00:00

In citing a rant about the anti-American German press (ironically, from a German journalist in the German press), Eamonn makes the assertion (common among warbloggers) that "only by cynical Bush-baiting (did Schröder) manage to cling to power".

I'm just wondering, is there any political data to either back this up or refute this? My gut feeling is that this is not directly true, as Stoiber did not present a clear alternative on Iraq (in fact, in the end, he was even more anti-war than Schröder). But are there any polls or analyses on the effect of the Iraq issue on the 2002 election?

I wish Germany had an Accordian Guy

2004-05-26T15:05:57+00:00

Hey, maybe now that Germany is finally going to get an immigration law (though I won't believe it until I see it), maybe it'll be lucky enough someday to get guys like Joey. But only if Germany is very, very lucky.

Ja, Nico, mache ich schon

2004-05-26T15:05:48+00:00

Lummaland: TellAnAmericanToVote.com

Nothing Broken, Nothing Torn

2004-05-26T13:05:38+00:00

So, having jumped through all the hoops at the specialist and family doctor this morning, I'm now sure that I didn't do any permanent damage to my knee yesterday. I probably stretched a ligament in the knee capsule, which is now inflamed. The pain will subside with rest and ice, although last evening I also found Beck's Gold to be an effective pain killer.

To-Do List

2004-05-25T13:05:22+00:00

Compared to yesterday, my to-do list for today is a breeze.

1. Stumble on steps at S-Bahn station Sternschanze on the way to work and twist knee. Do not notice pain at first. When at noon walking becomes extremely uncomfortable, go home. Find that family doctor has no office hours this afternoon. Go to pharmacy and buy strongest non-prescription pain pills available.

**Update:** My neighbor the physical therapist says that the fibula *(Wadenbein)* is way too flexible at the knee, and suspects a severe strain or a minor tear. She suggests I visit an orthopedist first thing in the morning. And since this was legally a work accident, I get to become acquainted with German workers' comp bureaucracy. Oh, joy!

Typo3 for Mac OS X

2004-05-25T02:05:47+00:00

Typo3 for Mac OS X

Seven tricks that Web users don't know

2004-05-25T02:05:24+00:00

Via Pepilog: Seven tricks that Web users don't know

Ping-O-Matic

2004-05-24T10:05:46+00:00

Ping-o-Matic; MetaPinging at http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

Tomorrow

2004-05-23T19:05:47+00:00

1. MamaMaus goes back to work tomorrow after 8 weeks sabbatical.
2. Tomorrow she takes the first flight to Munich for 3 days of meetings. Her alarm is set for 4 am.
3. Christopher's day care is on vacation. We have a substitute, whom I have never met. But I have written down her address. She expects to be paid. In cash.
4. Christopher has his usual speech therapy appointment on Monday afternoon at 4:30 pm.
5. Our carpenter is coming by in the evening to finish up some work in the living room. He expects to be paid. In cash.
6. My employer this week will either declare bankruptcy or be taken over. It does not have enough liquidity to meet this month's payroll.
7. Our new cat is scheduled to have a flea prevention treatment tomorrow.
8. Hopefully I will be able to keep everything straight.
9. Have I forgotten anything?

Foo Content Bar

2004-05-23T03:05:15+00:00

WordPress (which has now released 1.2) with its filtering capability makes it real easy to solve one of my formatting quirks, namely that I want my titles and permalinks inline with the content of each post, i.e. within the p-tags that are automatically inserted around the post. With MT I had to install a regex plugin to force in my strings. With WordPress, I define a simple filter, and by setting a priority, that filter is applied _before_ any tags are added.

It's really as simple as this:
function foo_content_bar($text) { return 'foo'.$text.'bar'; } add_filter('the_content','foo_content_bar',1);

(That last parameter to add_filter is the priority.)

What was right then

2004-05-21T19:05:49+00:00

Sunday's election of the German Bundespräsident is being overshadowed by the Nazi past of one of the delgates to the federal assembly that choose the president. Hans Filbinger, CDU, was a military judge for the Nazis, and in 1978 resigned as premier of Baden-Wuerttemberg state when his past came to light. At the time he was quoted as saying "what was right then cannot be wrong now". The thing is, this is the fourth time Filbinger has served on the assembly since his resignation. So it was OK in the '90s for ex-Nazi judges to choose the president, and suddenly not OK now? Or has German politics become so polarized that even old news can be dug up for new controversy?

Strawberry Jam Bread with Honey

2004-05-21T18:05:49+00:00

This is a huge Shockwave download, but Christopher's favorite webpage right now is the interactive animation "Tom und das Erdbeermarmeladebrot mit Honig" from Die Sendung mit Der Maus and narrated by Dirk Bach. Elementary knowledge of German required, and as a little spoiler, at the beginning it's OK to ride the pig, but at the end do NOT try to get honey from the frog.

Plugging and Hacking

2004-05-21T06:05:03+00:00

I've been playing a bit more with WordPress (for which there is a new release candidate since yesterday), and I'm reminded of what I didn't like about it back when it was b2, and what I don't like about Movable Type. With WordPress, if you want to do anything slightly different from what it intends (for example, customizing the text of the monthly archive links, or listing the 5 latest comments), you end up writing a hack, essentially rewriting one of its PHP functions to do what you want. But PHP is at least logical and well-documented. Movable Type has it's own well-documented but esoteric template language, for which you can find plugins to make it even more esoteric, with which you can do most but not all of what you want. I have about a dozen plugins installed, but I've forgotten which ones I really use. I can do Perl, I've done Perl for 10 years, but it's simple sysadmin baby-talk Perl, not elegant Perl like Ben and Mena. So I'm stumped by something simple like 'put all my post titles inline with the post content, except when an image comes at the beginning of the post content'. There's probably a way to do that with CSS, but I can't do CSS very well either.

They're only tools, and tools are not your friends

2004-05-20T18:05:44+00:00

Burningbird: They're only tools, and tools are not your friends

Father's Day

2004-05-19T18:05:48+00:00

Heiko explains German Father's Day: "Tomorrow is a national holiday in Germany; it's church related, Ascension Day... Not coincidentally there also is Father's Day tomorrow. It's the day when fathers leave their family at home, get social with other fellow sufferers, and drink lots and lots of alcohol, all while cycling (or riding) through the countryside." Sorry, Heiko, only fathers are allowed to participate.

Kindergarten Watch

2004-05-19T04:05:56+00:00

Christopher had a busy day yesterday. Not only did he have his hearing checked (which he happily demonstrated on me last evening with his doctor kit: 'Now the big bear and the little mouse are running in your ear!'). He also checked out the speech therapy kindergarten in Winsen. He loved it. The groups are very small (9 children), they have a great gym, and best of all, a huge toy helicopter. The amount of actual therapy (twice a week) is the same as the local integration group. The director talked with him for over an hour and thought he'd he an excellent candidate for the group. She found it very good that he listens and responds to corrections.

The group would also work well for his parents. The hours are 8:30 to 14:30, with transport provided (Winsen is 30 km from here). The place would be guaranteed for one year, with possible extensions after that. That's a schedule that we can plan around.

The final diagnosis will be on June 17, when we have an appointment with the county health department. After that we'll be able to make some decisions for both Christopher and Papa.

Love and Money

2004-05-18T19:05:01+00:00

(I've been corresponding with Heiko Hebig, who represents TypePad and Movable Type in Germany, about the new MT license.)

Hi Heiko,

The free version would be enough for PapaScott, but I'd already donated twice over the past couple of years and was looking forward to the Pro version. At any rate, on the first day already I cashed in my keys and purchased a personal license, as my way of saying thanks for the past 2 years of great software. Now 6A and I are quid, they don't owe me anything anymore.

But if I were to recommend MT to an small to mid-sized organization, $199 is a pretty steep entry price, especially if they aren't yet convinced that weblogs are a good thing.

My idea would be to drop the distinction between personal and commercial use, keep the unsupported free version as it is, charge $29 per blog for the supported version, with volume discounts starting with the 6th blog.

Anyway, I won't be dropping MT because I object to the license. I have been playing around with WordPress because I find the technology interesting, and especially contrasting the static-build of MT vs. the dynamic approaches. I also find the idea of seamlessly switching backends intriguing. (MT on even-numbered days, WordPress on odd-numbered days, and Blosxom on Sundays?).

It's all about love and money. You need both.

Scott

0xDECAFBAD: Use Atom for a Universal Blog Transfer Protocol

2004-05-18T16:05:33+00:00

0xDECAFBAD: Use Atom for a Universal Blog Transfer Protocol

Dear Mena,

2004-05-18T09:05:37+00:00

Re: Six Log: How are you using the tool? I do pro-bono work on websites for several non-profit organizations. It would be prohibitively expensive to purchase a commercial license for each of these sites. Sincerely, Scott Hanson

Postbank to offer instant transfers

2004-05-18T09:05:22+00:00

Postbank to offer instant transfers to internal accounts

Can You Hear Me Now?

2004-05-18T08:05:02+00:00

Christopher had his follow-up exam at the ear/nose/throat specialist this morning. His hearing is now normal. :-) :-) :-)

MT to WordPress

2004-05-16T19:05:41+00:00

Some notes on importing MT entries into WordPress:

The script in the WP RC uses the MT export file, so post numbers are not imported. That might be important if you use the post number in your permalink, like I do.
MT 3.0 seems to have a bug in the export routine... the dates are missing an AM/PM designation, so all posts and comments posted between noon and midnight are off by 12 hours. MT 2.661 exports from an MT 3.0 database just fine, though.
The default encoding of WP is UTF-8, so you either have to convert the MT export file from Latin 1 to UTF-8 (either recode or BBEdit works fine), or change the encoding in WP (under Options->Reading) to ISO 8859-1.

The SixApart solution: Divest TypePad

2004-05-16T14:05:57+00:00

BuzzMachine: The SixApart solution: Divest TypePad

Six Apart Backpedals

2004-05-15T08:05:05+00:00

Six Apart backpedals on MT license

Test Site

2004-05-15T02:05:12+00:00

On the other hand, the release candidate of WordPress gets a lot of things right on the first try.

What WordPress Does Wrong

2004-05-15T01:05:06+00:00

If your database craps out, your entire site is unreadable.

What WordPress Does Right

2004-05-14T19:05:12+00:00

Anyway - What WordPress Does Right

Movable Type Cashes Out

2004-05-14T16:05:53+00:00

The weblog world is ablaze with the news of the new licensing scheme for Movable Type. $99 for a personal version, a free version limited to 1 author and 3 weblogs, with the top commercial version (20 authors) at $599. A bit overpriced, I would say. If I were to introduce weblogs into my company's intranet (100 employees), it would be cheaper to install a Notes server (with hardware and much more functionality) than to license MT.

The controversy, though, reminds me of when Userland Frontier went commercial in the late '90s. A great product, an active developer community... but when it was no longer free, the community disintegrated. I hope that Six Apart is paying attention, and will rethink its pricing.

Last One Gone is a Rotten Egg!

2004-05-14T03:05:34+00:00

Press release from my employer: "The company is carrying on discussions with potential investors to secure continued financing. Only with a positive result can the liquidity and therefore the existance of the firm be achieved. Because the talks are in a critical phase, the board has decided to postpone the annual meeting scheduled for tomorrow." So is the time to leave a sinking ship when my feet start getting wet, or should I wait until the water is up to my neck?

DSL is female

2004-05-13T03:05:26+00:00

After weeks of pre-publicity, now we know. Alice is a DSL product from local provider HanseNet (a subsidiary of Telecom Italia), and is embodied (so to speak) not by an avatar but by a real-live 17-year-old model in heels and a high slit dress. 'Alice is fast.' 'Alice is dependable.' At least we are being spared 'Alice is cheap' or 'Alice is easy'. The posters are tame compared to, say, those from H&M, but the idea is still questionable. If there were a German version of misbehaving.net, they'd be having a field day.

Living in Europe: Czechia or Czech Republic?

2004-05-12T14:05:42+00:00

Living in Europe: Czechia or Czech Republic?

I'm now a Medienkritiker

2004-05-12T04:05:16+00:00

Well, not really. But Davids Medienkritik did just post a plea to help translate posts into English, and I'll be helping out now and again (once a week or so).

Why, espcially considering that David's views are, um, somewhat to the right of mine? Because it's a good blog, and it starts good conversations. Even if Germans and Americans tend to disagree, at Medienkritik they're at least talking to one another. As a bilingual expat, one thing I can offer to the community is to translate things that are interesting, and David's points are always interesting and worth considering.

Translation is hard work and I am by no means a profressional translator, but at least the first post was fun. I felt like I was behind enemy lines, writing headlines for the Bild-Zeiting.

2004-05-11T19:05:16+00:00

This is a brilliant song, and perfectly sums up my mood at the moment. Imperfect translation is mine.

Muß ich immer alles müssen was ich kann
Eine Hand trägt die Welt und die andere bietet Getränke an
Ich kann mit allen zehn Füßen in zwanzig Türen
Und mit dem elften in der Nase noch Balette aufführen
Aber wenn ich könnte wie ich wollte würde ich gar nichts wollen
Ich weiß aber dass alle etwas wollen sollen

Do I have to do everything that I can
One hand holds the world, the other offers something to drink
With all ten feet I can go through twenty doors
And the the eleventh I can perform ballet in my nose
But if I could do what I wanted I wouldn't want anything
But I know that everyone should want something

Wir können alles schaffen genau wie die tollen
Dressierten Affen wir müssen nur wollen
Wir müssen nur wollen wir müssen nur wollen
Wir müssen nur

We can do everything, just like the heroes
Trained monkeys, we just have to want to
We just have to want to, we just have to want to
We just have to

Muß ich immer alles müssen was ich kann
Eine Hand in den Sternen, die andere im Hintern vom Vordermann
Das ist das Land der begrenzten Unmöglichkeiten
Wir können Pferde ohne Beine rückwärts reiten
Wir können alles was zu eng ist mit dem Schlagbohrer weiten
Können glücklich sein und trotzdem Konzerne leiten

Do I have to do everything that I can
One hand in the stars, the other in the behind of the man in front
This is the land of limited impossibilites
We can ride legless horses backwards
Everything that is too tight we can expand with a hammer drill
We can be happy and still lead corporations

Wir können alles schaffen genau wie die tollen
Dressierten Affen wir müssen nur wollen
Wir müssen nur wollen wir müssen nur wollen
Wir müssen nur...

We can do everything, just like the heroes
Trained monkeys, we just have to want to
We just have to want to, we just have to want to
We just have to...

Hymn Manual

2004-05-11T09:05:49+00:00

Hymn Manual: "Apple creates excellent products. OS X is the most usable commercial operating system I've ever experienced. The iPod is great little device. The iTunes Music Store is a great way to buy music. Technologically speaking, I am enamored with almost everything they do. Ethically / legally speaking, however, they are (unfortunately) just as bad as most other big corporations."

Phil Ringnalda

2004-05-11T09:05:21+00:00

Bloglines extension for Mozilla

Don Park's Daily Habit - Tortures for Dummies

2004-05-11T04:05:33+00:00

Don Park: "I am not saying (the soldiers accused of torture at Abu Ghraib) are all angels corrupted by evil interrogators. What I am saying is that they are not too different from you and I. The problem is not just them, but all of us."

Useless Spiegel

2004-05-10T21:05:58+00:00

One thing I noticed while on vacation was how utterly useless Spiegel Online is for keeping up with German news. Take this evening, for example. Of the 5 'Top Stories', 3 are on the US and Iraq (if I want to read Bush-bashing, I'll go closer to the source), 1 is about sports (Oliver Kahn), and 1 about German news (Finance Minister Eichel). Even under 'Politics' there is little serious domestic news (2 of 7 stories; taxing brothels does not qualify as serious). While other blogs complain about alleged bias in the German media, I would be happy if the premier German news site simply could be somewhat more relevant.

Up In The Air

2004-05-10T20:05:50+00:00

We're now a month into the process of registering Christopher for kindergarten, and we are more confused than ever. As you recall, he is behind in his speech development, and it has been recommended to us several times that he not join a regular kindergarten group. There is a local 'integrated' group that includes sessions of speech therapy each week, and there is a 'therapy' group in the county seat Winsen (over 30 km away) that is intensive speech therapy. However, our speech therapist today told us to choose carefully... that the therapy group does not necessarily include more therapy than an integrated group. In any case, the diagnosis has to be confirmed by the county health office, and our appointment there is not until June.

Either group will be half-days, and will not be compatible with 2 full time working parents. I've informed my employer of the situation, and that I'll be either requesting part-time or leaving completely (and going freelance), but until we have more details, I can't make any decision.

2004-05-10T08:05:22+00:00

Tim Bray: "But if I'd had to write a one-liner as to why (I though the war in Iraq was a good idea), it would have been something along the lines of 'to stop the torture and brutality in the Baghdad hellholes.' Well, so much for that."

Brad Choate: OS X software inventory

2004-05-09T18:05:50+00:00

Brad Choate: OS X software inventory

code: theWebSocket; - Apple Archives

2004-05-09T18:05:00+00:00

code: theWebSocket; - Apple Archives

Nena was Emilia...

2004-05-09T10:05:24+00:00

and had her own home page at the animal shelter in Lüneburg.

IMAP for aggregators

2004-05-09T04:05:14+00:00

I've been playing with Net News Wire, and it seems to be as good as everyone says it is. It's the first desktop news aggregator I've tried that makes me feel like I want to keep using it. But it's still just a desktop aggregator... I can't use it at work, and it only works when the machine is turned on and connected.

Which got me thinking... wouldn't it be nice if news readers worked like IMAP mail clients? A server could collect the feeds and keep track of which items had been read, and I could use whatever reader I want from whatever machine I want. Just a thought...

Zieht den Bayern die Lederhosen aus!

2004-05-08T16:05:09+00:00

(Pull the pants off the Bavarians!) Bayern Munich is the New York Yankees of German soccer: rich, arrogant, hated and successful. It is therefore gives me great satisfaction to report that Bayern was defeated by Bremen at home 3-1, thus clinching the Bundesliga title for Bremen. I may not live to see Bayern relegated, but it's nice to see them lose once in a while, especially to a northern team.

Trial Marriage

2004-05-08T14:05:19+00:00

We've just returned from the animal shelter with a 1 year old female grey tabby, tentatively named Nena. We have a trial adoption for 2 weeks. If we are all happy with one another after that, we'll stay together permanently.

The Dark Side

2004-05-06T16:05:12+00:00

I now have one foot in the realm of evil... I'm blogging this on a 500 MHz 15" G4 PowerBook, obtained on eBay, running OS X 10.3.3. Mind-altering Mac user Kool-Aid was not included.

Heiko Hebig to Bring TypePad to Germany

2004-05-03T19:05:34+00:00

While I was trying to sleep off my jet lag this afternoon, Heiko announced that he will be representing Six Apart in Germany and helping to launch TypePad here. Is there room for two blogging companies in Hamburg, both seeking world domination? I think so.

For Sale: iTunes Prepaid Card

2004-05-02T18:05:07+00:00

While in the U.S. of A., I picked up a $15 iTunes Prepaid Card from Target, thinking I could thus sample the lovely graces of the iTunes Music Store. However, I didn't read the fine print, which requires that I set up a Music Store account to redeem the card. Since I don't have a US credit card, and I'm too old to ask my mother to use hers, I was unable to use the card. Anyone want to buy it, payment via PayPal? Send me a mail, make me an offer I can't refuse (over $14).

Update: The card is sold! No more inquiries, please.

Return

2004-05-02T10:05:50+00:00

We've made it safely back to cool and misty Hamburg. We'd love to spend the day sleeping off the jet lag, but that is a luxury reserved for non-parents, it seems.

Beach Reading

2004-04-26T01:04:50+00:00

Advanced PHP Programming by George Schlossnagle is an excellent book, but it is poor reading for the beach. It's also not a good book for babies.

Mama's Sunset

2004-04-17T12:04:03+00:00

Balcony View

2004-04-13T13:04:58+00:00

Baggage Service

2004-04-11T19:04:17+00:00

Vacation update: 3 pm, 6 phone calls to Delta, all day waiting for courier to call, and still no missing suitcase. First day of vacation ruined. So far our story matches this complaint about Delta Baggage Service, so things may not get better. Update We have it. Mama decided it was useless to deal with the call center, and drove to the airport to talk to someone in person. One phone call, the courier brought the bag. Advice to Delta: dump the outsourced call center.

Happy Easter

2004-04-11T11:04:00+00:00

We made it, as did 2 of our 3 suitcases. We a full Gulf view from the balcony and even a poor to medium WiFi signal (although our neighbor Mr. 'linksys' should really change his default settings and password).

HAM-FRA-ATL-TPA

2004-04-09T17:04:50+00:00

Tomorrow at 5am (ugh) we'll be on our way. By sunset tomorrow evening we'll be on the Gulf coast.

Jodeldiplom

2004-04-08T16:04:34+00:00

German readers will recognize the title as a reference to Loriot, the German comic, and his classic sketch on the 'Yodel Diploma'. A reporter is interviewing a German housewife who, with the permission of her husband, has learned yodeling at night school, including the conjugation of yodel verbs ("Di dudl di?" "Nein, di dudl dö!"), so she can earn a degree and have something she can call her own. Something in the hand. A yodel diploma.

My career in Germany as a systems administrator is my yodel diploma. We came here for my wife's career. We knew she'd be successful here, and her success has exceeded our wildest expectations. My accomplishment here has been to establish my own career, independent of my wife and independent of being an American. I learned Linux and Unix by myself, without any schooling, and now I can earn a living administrating Linux and Unix machines. It's something I can call my own.

Therefore I'm a bit attached to my job, even if we don't need the money, and I'm not entirely willing to give it up for Christopher's special kindergarten group. There a surplus of IT workers, the economy is flat, I'm over 40 and don't have a relevent degree. Would I be able to find similar employment after Christopher is out of kindergarten and in school in two years? Maybe it's selfish, in fact, I know it's selfish, but I don't really want to give up the one thing I've earned on my own in Germany. I don't want to give up my Jodeldiplom.

Vacation. Starts. Now.

2004-04-08T16:04:18+00:00

Next. Work. Day. 3. May.

Good News for the Chancellor

2004-04-08T08:04:07+00:00

Via H-BLOG: For Gerhard Schröder's 60th birthday, the Bild Zeitung created a front page with only good news for the Chancellor. All lies. "Germany Debt-Free: Finance Minister had miscalculated for years!" "Oskar Lafontaine emigrates to France!" "Sorry, Gerd: Bush begs for forgiveness!"

Crossroads

2004-04-08T04:04:25+00:00

We've been looking into Kindergarten the past couple of weeks, which we want Christopher to start this fall. We have a full-day slot reserved in the regular group, but given his speech development it has been strongly recommended that he attend a so-called 'integration' group, where the group is smaller and there are regular speech therapy sessions. Mama and Christopher were there on Tuesday, and they both loved it. We'd also most likely be able to have a doctor certify that Christopher needs the integration group, so that the county would cover all costs.

Here's the problem. The integration group is only half-day, afternoons, 12:30-17:30, here in Jesteburg. We both work full-time in Hamburg, an hours' commute away. Do the math. Our Tagesmutter is in Buchholz, 15 minutes away, so arranging transport from there is not feasible.

In fact, right now if you were to ask whether my job is worth making all the arrangements for Christopher to attend this Kindergarten while I work 8 hours in Hamburg, I would truthfully have to say no.

Samba 3... yes!

2004-04-07T09:04:38+00:00

It worked! :-) At least 95% worked, and the few problems could be easily fixed. Two notes:

1. We decided to skip domain mapping, since we don't have a group for all Samba users, and Samba 3 only maps one-to-one.

2. To convert the SIDs, I exported the smbpasswd to XML, added line breaks, ran this perl script, and imported into samtdb.

:
#!/usr/bin/perl
while (<>) {
if (/sid=/) {
/-(d+)"/;
my $oldrid=$1;
my $newrid= (($oldrid-1000)*2)+1000 ;
s/-d+"/-$newrid"/;
}
print;
}

Smarty Templates and Movable Type

2004-04-06T19:04:49+00:00

Brad Choate: Smart templating with Movable Type

Betrayal of trust

2004-04-05T19:04:22+00:00

newsrack cites a New York Times article on companies systematically altering employee time cards, a practice I'm sure is not confined to the US. Here in Germany, for example, the union Ver.di is campaigning against labor practices at the Aldi and Lidl chains. Shaving pay is theft of the worst kind, from those who can least afford the loss. We've experienced first hand that it is possible to start from minimum wage and rise to run (a good share of) the company, and have seen people fired for the practices described in the article. These managers and supervisors are not only cheating the people resonsible for their success, they are betraying the economic system that makes their success possible, and those of us who believe in that system. The free market only works when people are rewarded for their talents and their efforts. Deny them what they are due, and the system will rot. It is extremely important for supervisors not to rely solely on their managers, but to talk to their employees, and make sure they are happy and getting what they have earned.

Last of his Kind

2004-04-05T16:04:51+00:00

This evening we decided to end the suffering of the first, smallest, smartest and now last of our three American cats, Mausi. Even though we've been owned by several cats the past two decades, this is first time we've made such a decision. We probably waited too long.

Samba 3... maybe?

2004-04-04T18:04:31+00:00

Sometimes when you don't know what you're doing, you have to ask for help. So now I think I know what went wrong with our first attempt. Samba calculates the SID for each user dynamically, and samba-tng uses a different formula than samba 3. For users to continue to work after switching to samba 3, their SIDs must be explicitly set to the old values. Since smbpasswd does not store SIDS, the user information has to be stored in a database, preferably ldap, but for our small network tdbsam will suffice.

Almost as an aside, I also found out that I was mapping the unix groups incorrectly. So will the switch to samba 3 now work? We can test ahead of time, but we will only know for sure when we go live.

Wet memories

2004-04-04T14:04:44+00:00

Just so you know, a USB memory stick can survive 40°C in the washing machine, although I hope the condensation inside will eventually evaporate.

Marketing is everything

2004-04-04T06:04:56+00:00

Christopher has always refused to wear jeans or canvas pants, preferring either overalls or (now that he can go to the toilet by himself) sweat pants. The average life expectancy of sweat pants for a 4 year old is about one week.... the weakest link is in the knees.

Then yesterday Mama started calling his tan canvas pants 'Janick pants', after his best friend Janick. This morning he requested the Janick pants by name. We're hoping to expand the brand to include all colors and fabrics.

Googlerank

2004-04-04T06:04:53+00:00

Why would anyone would want to increase his Googlerank for Weber?

blogg and blogosfear

2004-04-04T06:04:12+00:00

If 'blog' has 2 g's in German, why does blogosfear have only one?

Better off without us?

2004-04-03T19:04:34+00:00

Spiegel Online: Secret government commission declares rebuilding of eastern Germany a failure "Immense unemployment, an overaged population: a secret circle of advisors to the German government has declared the rebuilding of eastern Germany in its present form for a failure. The paper accuses the goverment of lack of concept and inaction in the east." 1.2 trillion Euros down the drain (and you thought the war in Iraq was expensive). Meanwhile, former Warsaw Pact allies of the DDR will be joining the EU next month. Would the ex-DDR have been better off without the misguided help of the BRD? Would Europe as a whole have been better off?

The cat that rules Estonia

2004-04-03T09:04:17+00:00

Sofia Sideshow: The cat that rules Estonia

Living in Europe

2004-04-03T05:04:21+00:00

They took down the beta sign so now it must now be official. Living in Europe "is a new community blogzine produced by a cooperative of bloggers and writers with a focus on ... Living in Europe." The concept (see Eammon's 4 part interview, in 5 parts) started last year with Living in China, and and is now also in Australia, India and Latin America. In Europe they have an intriguing idea to deal with languages... the main blog is in English, but there can be sub-categories for countries and regions (for example, Catalonia) with posts various languages, so there can be some interaction between native and non-native writers.

At our last BlogMeet in Hamburg we were talking about how to better communication among bloggers in Europe. Here's one way to actually do it. New contributors are always welcome.

The end of Schengen?

2004-04-03T04:04:57+00:00

John Robb: "Reuters Visitors from visa-waiver countries (UK, Germany, etc.) will all be photographed and fingerprinted when they enter the US.[...] There is clearly foot dragging by visa-waiver countries on the new US requirement for vistors to have passports with biometric data (something the US doesn't have) for unimpeded entry." If this is the trend, does this mean the end of the borderless EU, at least in the long term?

Help Wanted, Anyone?

2004-04-01T20:04:31+00:00

The layoff reaper strikes again at my employer. Despite short time and a slight profit last year, our workforce will be 10% less as of June 30. Let me ask here on behalf of 2 soon-to-be ex-coworkers that if anyone needs a Lotus Notes Admin (willing to relocate) or a Win/Citrix/Linux Workstation Admin (in Hamburg), they can drop me a line.

April Fool's Day

2004-04-01T03:04:46+00:00

I'm sure I've said this before, but an annoying thing about Germany is that Germans take April Fool's Day very seriously.

Subsidized Day Care

2004-04-01T03:04:17+00:00

Over the weekend when doing income taxes, I was surprised to learn that the German government is now paying 25% of our day care costs. As of 2003, child care costs are generally tax deductable, and since we pay our Tagesmutter 600 Euros per month, that's not a small amount added to our tax refund. Thank you, Chancellor Schröder.

Of course, we're in a high tax bracket and could afford day care even without the deduction. For a low or middle class family who actually needs the help, the subsidy is much less, which I don't think was exactly what Red/Green had in mind. Child care is subsidized for the rich, while the government kindergarten system, which is supposed to guarantee a place for all pre-school children, is underfunded and fails to provide places for 200,000 children. (The failed voucher system in Hamburg is an extreme example. The Abendblatt recently reported on a case where an unemployed mother was unable to accept employment because she would then lose her kindergarten voucher. Child care only if you don't need it!)

The government is also kind enough to subsidize my daily commute to work, which is expensive because of high gas taxes and because I choose to live outside the city. Since the deduction is a flat rate per kilometer based on a mid-sized car, I actually make money on the deduction by driving a small car or taking the train.

That's the thing with a high, progressive income tax with a lot of loopholes. The deductions are then degressive, benefitting the rich more than the poor. At high tax brackets, it becomes more lucrative to expend effort to find tax loopholes than to actually be productive and increase one's income (and expand the economy and create jobs).

All the parties have been talking about reforming the income tax by lowering rates and removing loopholes, but they aren't doing much about it.

Self Promotion

2004-03-31T20:03:19+00:00

As seen at vowe

Homework

2004-03-30T18:03:18+00:00

He's just coloring, but he says it's homework.

Engineer Genes

2004-03-30T18:03:08+00:00

He has them from Grandpa.

Samba 3... not!

2004-03-30T15:03:53+00:00

At work I inherited an installation of Samba-TNG. We want to eventually migrate to Samba 3, which my predecessor warned me would be really hard. I didn't really believe him, mostly out of ignorance, since I have absolutely no clue how Windows networking works. Samba-TNG has been acting up the past few weeks, destroying user profiles and refusing to play with Win2K SP4, so when my boss asked about Samba 3, I foolishly said yes, let's do it. I set up a test domain, and was able to log on, mount volumes, and print. So we decided to go live with Samba 3. I could log on, mount volumes and print, but the real Windows users were having tons of problems. So we bailed out and went back to TNG.

I had copied over the smbpasswd, the domain SID, and the group map. I guess that's not enough. It looks like I need to copy over machine SIDs (or are they RIDs?), and I haven't a clue how to do that. On Google I can't find anything about 'migrating from samba tng to samba 3'. So for now I'm stuck. Sometimes I'm as dumb as I think I am.

Posts not intended for my mother

2004-03-29T19:03:02+00:00

My blog is schizophrenic, just like me. I sometimes blog about my family, sometimes about politics, sometimes about being an expat in a strange land, and sometimes about geeky computer stuff. Since the geeky computer stuff doesn't have much to do with the other stuff, and my mother doesn't really want to read the geeky stuff, I'm going to try putting it on a separate page called PapaTech. We'll see how that works.

Firesomething

2004-03-29T16:03:12+00:00

As seen at slashdot, firesomething is an extension for ~~firebird~~, er, firefox that will rename the browser at random, with different names for each window. Best of all, you can put the random name into your User Agent, so you can mess with the minds of webmasters who spend too much time reading their logs. Right now I am browsing with Mooncow and posting with Waterworm. Just so you know.

Haberler

2004-03-28T20:03:59+00:00

Haberler: ARD Tagesschau in Turkish

Bicycle

2004-03-27T19:03:55+00:00

Gone Fishing

2004-03-23T19:03:20+00:00

At least mentally. I'll be back here next week.

Ublog Apart

2004-03-22T04:03:02+00:00

Loïc Le Meur, who was recently in Hamburg at our Blog Meet, has announced that his company will be the exclusive partner of Six Apart in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). And now we know why he came to Germany for a week... it wasn't just a whim. :-)

At the BlogMeet neezee and I talked with him for a little bit how bloggers can bridge across countries despite language barriers, and how one blogs differently in a native language than in a learned language. I was impressed by him and his enthusiasm, and it will be good for us bloggers that Loïc and his company will be present in Germany. It will be good for the competition as well.

Gordon

2004-03-21T18:03:30+00:00

This is Christopher, and his locomotive friend Gordon. And a picture of Gordon. I hope HIT Entertainment doesn't sue us for the striking likeness.

The Spinger Telegraph?

2004-03-21T16:03:34+00:00

Spiegel Online is reporting that Germany's Springer Verlag, Europe's largest newspaper publisher (Bild, Die Welt) will make an offer to buy the Daily Telegraph, Great Britain's largest non-tabloid paper. I guess if they can handle Rover and Mini going German, then they can handle a German newspaper, although it would be more fun to see Springer take over a British tabloid, just to see if it would keep printing anti-German headlines.

Markdown

2004-03-21T13:03:32+00:00

Markdown is a syntax for converting plain text to (X)HTML. It's written in Perl and available (among other things) as a MT plugin. I'm trying it out with this post. It's designed to leave the plain text very readable after it's marked up, as opposed to Textile, which makes marking up plain text easy but is leaves the plain text less than readable. Markdown might come in handy for text maintained by less web-savvy colleagues, or for quickly marking up text from web-unfriendly sources (like Microsoft Word). I'll try it out for a few posts.

(The MTEntry tag convert_breaks seems to be incompatible with Markdown. I've removed it from my templates for now, and if I keep using Markdown I'll figure out another way to get my entry title and my permalink on the same line as the entry body.)

vowe goes to CeBIT so you don't have to

2004-03-20T18:03:11+00:00

vowe goes to CeBIT so you don't have to

2004-03-20T06:03:10+00:00

FAZ Weekly: Döner, Anyone?

Home Alone

2004-03-19T18:03:13+00:00

Mama's travel schedule has been heck the past 8 weeks. Right now her employer is holding 3 2-day meetings one after the the other, extending through Monday. So Christopher and I are baching it for the second consecutive weekend. The good news that after that she'll be home on paid sabbatical for the next two months. I wonder if she'll know what to do with herself? Meanwhile, tomorrow Christopher and I will be seeing the new Disney film, and hopefully it won't rain the entire weekend. Update On Saturday afternoon we're off to a good start, it's rained all day... :-(

Spiegel Online claims to have a strategy paper from al Qaida

2004-03-18T15:03:40+00:00

Spiegel Online claims to have a strategy paper from al Qaida from October 2003 calling for an attack on Spain to influence the parliamentrary elections and force a withdrawl of Spanish troops from Iraq. It describes Spain as the most appropriate "first domino".

Helden

2004-03-17T05:03:39+00:00

Like Little Jamie, I've recently joined the 21st century and bought an mp3 stick, 256 MB USB. So now I can tune out whereever I am. My current favorite is the debut album Die Reklamation from Wir Sind Helden, who lately swept the Echos (the German Grammies). They're '80s-retro NDW with clever modern German lyrics. I mention them here for non-native German speakers.... they do some fun things with the language, and you might enjoy listening to them just for that, even if you're not into post-modern anti-consumerism (with a fetish for sledge hammers?). They offer a kitschy remix of Guten Tag (MP3, 4MB) on their website with lyrics to follow along. My favorite song, though, is the quieter Denkmal, whose chorus can be slightly edited into a slogan for webloggers: Ich werd die schlechtesten Blogger dieser Stadt engagiern, Die sollen nachts noch die Trümmer mit Parolen beschmiern (I'll hire the worst bloggers in the city, tonight they will paint slogans on the ruins).

CeBIT Optional

2004-03-16T15:03:34+00:00

Just for the record, I won't be at the CeBIT this year, even though several Hamburg bloggers will be atttending the world's largest cattle stampede, er, I mean computer and IT trade show in Hannover (insert gratuitous Hannover joke here). Funny, back when I was not in the industry, I used to go to CeBIT on my own nickel. Nowadays, even though my company exhibits there, I have no desire to join the herd. Moo.

Citizen Smash on Spain

2004-03-16T05:03:06+00:00

Citizen Smash: "(Some) have accused the Spanish of knuckling under to terrorists. These latter reactions are wholly inappropriate. Spain is not America, but it is an ally, and a representative democracy. It is not our place to criticize whom our allies select to be their leaders, so long as the elections are free and fair, and democracy is not undermined. The people of Spain have spoken, and the rest of us must respect their decision. Aznar had been a steadfast supporter of the United States and President Bush during a very trying time in our history. For his loyalty, he deserves our undying gratitude. Muchas gracias, Señor Aznar."

Another fine moment in systems administration

2004-03-15T17:03:32+00:00

A month ago I replaced the system on a monitoring server, a low-powered PC that stores our syslogs and runs Cricket, collecting various statistics via SNMP. It also serves as the serial console for most of our Suns, so the machine has to stay up and usable. Over the past couple of weeks performance had degraded steadily. Rebooting would solve the problem at first, but within an hour the load would again be maxxed out, even though the CPU was mostly idle and no RAM was being swapped. I installed a new kernel. I replaced the network card (which was spewing errors). I tried stopping services. I turned off the software RAID. Nothing helped.

Finally today I stumbled upon the answer. The mail logs from our postfix servers were not being rotated. We had customized syslog to save the mail logs with non-standard names, and my predecessor had put the logrotate configuration for the custom log files not where I'd expect, in /etc/logrotate.conf (which I had copied over from the old system), but in a file named 'guenther' (name changed to protext the guilty) under /etc/logrotate.d/. Cricket was performing a number of greps every 5 minutes on that log file, which by now was at over 200 MB.

I copied over the file, renamed it guenther_bloedmann, ran a manual logrotate, and everything now seems fine.

Tobias is looking for a German greenish kind of liberal New Labour party

2004-03-15T07:03:21+00:00

Tobias is looking for a German greenish kind of liberal New Labour party

Going Out With a Whimper

2004-03-14T22:03:16+00:00

I'm glad I'm not a Spanish voter. With the tragedy in Madrid just days before todays election, the facts are still unclear, and and least from here it seems both main parties were trying to twist the facts to their advantage. The voters thought the ruling conservatives went too far, and despite leading the polls they appear to have lost, with a large voter turnout. And Aznar bows out not so gracefully, handing power to the leftist oppostition rather than his designated successor. The message of the voters is not one of weakness in the face of terror, but rather an insistance that any government deal honestly with its citizens in time of crisis. Voters by definition are always right. Do not lie to them, they do not take deception lightly.

You're a handsome blog, what's your owner's name?

2004-03-14T07:03:45+00:00

You're a handsome blog, what's your owner's name?

Lyssa has moved

2004-03-12T10:03:38+00:00

Lyssa has moved

Wikipedia: March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks

2004-03-12T06:03:19+00:00

Wikipedia: March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks

Death in Madrid

2004-03-11T21:03:35+00:00

At 7:40 this morning my commuter train had pulled into the main station in Hamburg, and I was on my way to the U-Bahn to go work. At the same time in Madrid, 190 commuters in Madrid were killed by at least 10 explosions at 3 commuter stations. I can only think of the words from the memorial service for the victims of 9/11. To paraphrase for todays events... this was not 190 people being killed, it was 1 person being killed, 1 person with home, family, friends, 1 person being killed.... 190 times.

While I realize that it is necessary to find those responsible, be they from the ETA or al Qaeda, but on the other hand I find the speculation on which group is responsible to be somewhat cynical. Does it really matter to the victims for which supposed cause they were killed? Doesn't the attention given to the perpetrators and their motives give them a false legitimacy and encourage similar attacks in the future? At this moment, I would rather think of the father and husband who, unlike me, was not able to step off the train and onto the platform at 7:40 this morning, than about the twisted reasoning and motives of those who killed him.

2004-03-10T06:03:46+00:00

Chancellor Schröder may not give interviews to the Bild Zeitung, but Bundespresident candidate gave Bild an exclusive interview (and unlike the Bild home page, the link is safe for work, even for Americans). It's a pro-CDU campaign from Bild, what else would you expect, but Köhler is saying a lot of the right things (quoting JFK: Ask not what your country can do for you...). I'm anxious to hear him give a speech to see if he measures up to von Weizsacker and Herzog.

50th anniversary of Southdale (Edina, MN), the first shopping mall

2004-03-09T20:03:10+00:00

Via dangerousmeta: 50th anniversary of the first shopping mall: Southdale (Edina, MN)

iNotes Tech Support

2004-03-09T19:03:04+00:00

If your wife keeps bugging you because she can't read her mail on Windows XP using iNotes with IE6 ("unable to process request"), try activating both boxes (use HTTP 1.1 / use HTTP 1.1 with proxy) under Internet Options -> Advanced -> HTTP 1.1 settings. Then maybe she can leave you alone

Medienkritik rates a Top-Meldung at Spiegel Online

2004-03-08T19:03:09+00:00

Medienkritik rates a Top-Meldung at Spiegel Online. UPDATE Best reaction: "the Internet has a sense of humor (even if Der Spiegel does not). Heh."

Betriebsfremd

2004-03-08T18:03:03+00:00

It was Friday afternoon, it had been a hard week, and all I wanted to do was go home. But no trains were running southbound from Hamburg. The tracks had been closed "due to a betriebsfremde person on the tracks", meaning a non-rail employee. And this during Friday rush hour. The platform filled with waiting passengers for the next 30 minutes, then the tracks were cleared and the trains started running again.

The following Monday morning, it was cold and I was running late. I arrived at our commuter station, but no trains were running. The tracks to Hamburg were blocked for an unexplained reason, so the local train wasn't running at all, and the regional had to take a roundabout route and was running late. So I ran late.

We later heard from our Tagesmutter that the daughter of her cleaning lady had thrown herself in front of a train that morning. I then realized what the station announcer had meant by a "betriebsfremde person on the tracks".

The cleaning lady was someone I had exchanged pleasantries with on Thursday afternoons. Hello, how are you, I'm here to pick up my son. She's black, I assume from Ghana, I assume with unclear immigration status. An asylum seeker, mayber? She seemed happy. I never gave her a second thought. I never stopped to think that she might have children, or a daughter who was unhappy, so unhappy that she saw no future except in front of a speeding train.

She wasn't there last Thursday afternoon. If I ever see her again, I won't know what to say to her.

The South, Extended

2004-03-08T05:03:48+00:00

German media don't understand American politics, so they come to some funny conclusions. Case in point: Spiegel Online suggests that John Kerry find a running mate from the South, for example Hillary Clinton (Senator from New York, birthplace Chicago). She's been accused of many things, but being a Southerner is not one of them. (Oh, and by the way, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is not a Southerner either.)

2004-03-07T17:03:32+00:00

Jörg Haider's party wins re-election in Kärnten

Couchblog is now called Webpropaganda

2004-03-07T16:03:52+00:00

Couchblog is now called Webpropaganda

Blog Meet in Hamburg

2004-03-07T05:03:27+00:00

In case anyone in the area has missed it, the latest Hamburg Blog Meet will be this Wednesday evening, 7:30pm, Marktstube (Marktstr. 119). Loic le Meur from the French blog hosting service U-Blog will be in town as part of his whirlwind German tour.

Clear HTTP Auth

2004-03-06T08:03:18+00:00

Via Simon Willison: Clear HTTP Auth extension for Mozilla and Firefox. This will be a big timesaver for me at work, since I don't really care how my internal web apps look (best viewed with lynx), but I do care that the authentication works.

Blogeline: Oldest McDonald's in Hamburg to close

2004-03-04T22:03:39+00:00

Blogeline: Oldest McDonald's in Hamburg to close

2004-03-04T21:03:52+00:00

To loosely paraphrase Helmut Kohl, politics is like making sausage. It doesn't matter what goes in, what matters is what comes out. And for the three opposition parties in Germany, who together have a majority to determine the new German Bundespresident in May, the process of grinding out a common candidate has been very messy indeed. That common candidate is the current head of the International Monetary Fund Horst Köhler.

The office of Bundespresident is for the most part ceremonial and non-political, but the election every 5 years of the president by a convention of the federal Bundestag and the state parliments is highly political. This year has been more political than usual, with the rivarly between CDU and CSU, and the current weakness of the FDP.

Germany has been lucky with its presidents. The first presidents I experienced, von Wiezsacker and Herzog, were eloquent spokesmen for Germany, its history, and its place in the world. Unfortunately, the SPD opted for an active poltician when it had its say in 1999. While Johannes Rau has been a good president, he has not lived up to his predecessors. He is unable to rise far enough above the poltical fray to exert moral authority, the only authority the office affords.

The first choice of the Union parties, Wolfgang Schäuble, is also an active poltician, and would have had the same weaknesses as Rau. Therefore I am pleased that the selection has gone to a non-politician. I know little about Köhler, except that he served under Kohl, and has been a capable IMF director. Knowledge of global finance can certainly be an asset for a Germany searching for the proper role in the global economy and political order. And now the politcians who chose him can return to their daily business, producing sausage. What matters is what comes out.

(Coincidentally, sausage-maker Kohl today presented the first volume of his memoirs.)

NY Times: Al Qaeda operatives were tracked by their anonymous GSM SIM cards

2004-03-04T18:03:10+00:00

NY Times: Al Qaeda operatives were tracked by their anonymous GSM SIM cards

Chinese Turnips

2004-03-04T07:03:03+00:00

A while ago I mentioned Mark Twain's famous comment that "in German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has". (Linguistically speaking, of course. I have no idea what turnips do under cover of darkness.) Today at messy-78's Chinese Word of the Day, I learned that with Chinese pronouns, noone has sex. Not turnips, not young girls, noone. Steve says that this is hard for English speakers to parse, since they calling my sister 'he" makes us pause, just the same as calling the girl "it" in German still makes me pause. I would guess that German speakers would have an easier time with Chinese than English speakers, for whom (linguistic) sex is confined to people and ships.

Mom's Office

2004-03-03T20:03:39+00:00

CNN.com McDonald's to phase out supersizing

2004-03-03T07:03:03+00:00

CNN.com McDonald's to phase out supersizing

2004-03-02T18:03:54+00:00

Via Der Schockwellenreiter: http://www.süddeutsche.de, with an umlaut in the URL

Joe, Montana

2004-03-02T12:03:26+00:00

Joe, Montana

Et tu, Ole?

2004-03-01T21:03:41+00:00

Via SPD-Horn: Political conspiracy theory from the FAZ. Was Schill's rise and fall just a set-up? Maybe Beust didn't just pull a Stoiber, he also pulled a Kohl (feigning weakness to outmaneuver a rival).

Russell Beattie: Looking back at Spain

2004-03-01T19:03:51+00:00

Russell Beattie: Looking back at Spain

Dresden: Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor

2004-03-01T18:03:17+00:00

via sofa: Salon.com Books "Dresden: Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1945" by Frederick Taylor

The Meaning of Hamburg

2004-03-01T05:03:17+00:00

I've now slept on the Hamburg election. Despite the glee of some commentators over yet another defeat for Chancellor Schröder, they're missing the real meaning of the election in Hamburg... a victory for Angela Merkel, and the emergence of a new star in the CDU, Ole von Beust.

The failure of the FDP to reach 5% reduces their weight for the selection of the Bundespresident, and Guido must now realize that unless he finally puts his yellow house in order, the CDU can do the same thing nationally as it has done in Hamburg: rule without the FDP.

Ole von Beust is now free of the two skeletons in the closet, his homosexuality and Ronald Schill. He is now free to play a national role in the CDU. By 'pulling a Stoiber' in Hamburg, von Beust must now be mentioned in the same breath as CDU stars like Koch and Wulff.

And a new moderate CDU star strengthens Merkel's hand against the Lederhosen wing of the Union. I doubt that Stoiber will throw in the towel and move to Bellevue (i.e. accept the office of Bundespresident, removing him from political influence), but I do believe that the Union will take more moderate positions on issues like immigration and tax reform, and that this makes Merkel even more likely to be the next chancellor candidate.

(Lightly ediited from a comment posted at Medienkritik.)

von Beust!

2004-02-29T17:02:44+00:00

The polls are closed in Hamburg, and both major networks are projecting an absolute majority for Ole von Beust and the CDU. FDP and the two Schill parties have fallen short of 5%. As would be expected, ZDF is predicting a better CDU result (48-42) than is ARD/NDR (46.5-44.5) over SPD/GAL.

Subversion

2004-02-29T07:02:21+00:00

Pardon me while I dance a jig in the living room. I finally got subversion working on Solaris 8. It doesn't work out of the box, you have to know the proper incantation.

Of course, you have every right to ask what I am doing working on Solaris at 7 am on Sunday. It's because I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Sense of Humor?

2004-02-28T17:02:25+00:00

PRESIDENT BUSH: "(Chancellor Schröder) has got a good sense of humor, and therefore, he is able to make me laugh. And a person that can make me laugh is a person who is easy to be with. And a person who is easy to be with means I've got a comfortable relationship with him."

Since when is Schröder known for his sense of humor? Did he memorize some jokes on the plane to Washington, or what? "Did you hear the one about the German electronic road toll... "

Telemarketing for Schill

2004-02-28T16:02:36+00:00

As reported in the Abendblatt and personally experienced by Jimmi, Pro-DM candidate and former Judge Merciless Ronald Schill resorted to recorded telephone messages 2 days before Sunday's election in Hamburg. It's the first time I've heard of such telemarketing techniques in a German election campaign, and I imagine most voters were confused or angered by the calls. But Judge Merciless needs the help... polls put his new party well under the 5% it needs to enter the Hamburg parliament.

The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story

2004-02-28T07:02:41+00:00

The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story

John Kerry is a Communist Dupe.

2004-02-27T02:02:51+00:00

John Kerry is a Communist Dupe. And a North Korean Stooge. Which probably explains the funny hair.

D Rex?

2004-02-26T18:02:09+00:00

Christopher has become a fan of the The Land Before Time cartoon film series. He particularly enjoys No. 8, with the snow and the mean 'Dinosaurus Rex', as he calls it.

www.schwule-fuer-ole.com

2004-02-25T19:02:19+00:00

www.schwule-fuer-ole.com

Who Should You Believe?

2004-02-25T18:02:28+00:00

Sunday is election day in Hamburg. If you believe the NDR, the race is neck and neck. If you believe the Springer press, the CDU has a clear lead. Mayor Beust has cancelled a TV debate with SPD candidate Mirow scheduled for this evening. Spiegel Online thinks Mirow's Kindergarten poster made him look silly. And the best information on the election can be found at Hamburger Wahlblog.

BBC: Swiss hunt air controller's killer

2004-02-25T17:02:26+00:00

BBC: Swiss hunt air controller's killer Swiss police have launched a hunt for the killer of an air traffic controller who had been on duty at the time of a deadly mid-air collision in 2002.

Blame Janet Jackson

2004-02-23T21:02:27+00:00

Why else would the Karneval floats in Düsseldorf show both Chancellor Schröder and CDU Leader Merkel naked as jaybirds?

Chicago Boyz: The European "Mood"

2004-02-23T20:02:14+00:00

Chicago Boyz: The European "Mood"

Burningbird: Ralph Nader: Unsafe at any speed

2004-02-23T18:02:05+00:00

Burningbird: Ralph Nader: Unsafe at any speed "I think Nader is closer to Bush in outlook than not. Both believe that everything boils down to corporate interests."

Knight in Shining Armor

2004-02-22T19:02:24+00:00

Christopher is set for his Fasching party tomorrow.

The Fear Mongers

2004-02-22T17:02:53+00:00

Now that I'm taking the train to work, I have time to read things like an article on populism and the Bild newspaper in Die Zeit. It makes a number of good points. Bild is now the most important media outlet (Leitmedium) in Germany, having replaced Der Spiegel. True... if I were to imagine a federal minister today ordering a police raid of a newsroom, à la Franz-Josef Strauss, it would be at Bild, not Spiegel. Bild's editorial line (against health reform and pension reform) reflects to a large degree its older, lower-income readership, a clientele it shares with the SPD. But while the paper can strengthen trends, it cannot set them. It was unable to elect Stoiber, who it heavily supported in 2002. In the end the paper, whose circulation of 3.8 million is at a long-time low, is not trying to set a political agenda, but trying to cement its readership by playing on its fear of reform.

Let Him Run

2004-02-22T15:02:14+00:00

MSNBC: Ralph Nader to run for president, this time as an independent. And the Democrats have already begun to gnash their teeth. Didn't Nader cost them the last election? Since I voted for Nader in 2000, I can answer that with no. To think otherwise is to believe that voters are dumb. They are not. My vote was actually not for Nader, but against Gore, whom in 2000 I saw no reason to support, nothing to distinguish him from the other candidate. If Nader weren't on the ballot, I would have voted for another 3rd candidate, or for nobody at all. Things are different now. Bush is a known quantity, we know what we have if he is re-elected. Distinguishing the two major candidates is not going to be a problem this year. So let Nader run. I won't be voting for him, and he won't make any difference.

AmericanCandy.de - Sweets, Drinks, Snacks, Dips & More

2004-02-21T13:02:08+00:00

Via Couchblog: AmericanCandy.de - Sweets, Drinks, Snacks, Dips & More

trainedmonkey: brian wilson is back in the studio completing smile, the followup to pet sounds

2004-02-21T07:02:41+00:00

trainedmonkey: brian wilson is back in the studio completing smile, the followup to pet sounds

Four Weeks for the Cat

2004-02-20T18:02:52+00:00

Today concludes a 4 week period in which Mama was out of town 11 out of 20 working days, 12 if you count a day when her boss was in town and she was home only in body and not in spirit. Usually she's gone just 2 or 3 days each month. I find just a day or two of playing single parent to be exhausting... I wonder how those who are single parents 24/7 have any energy at all.

The only good thing to some out of this stretch is that I've rediscovered commuting by train. A new operator has taken over the line between Bremen and Hamburg, and as opposed to my experience with the Deutsche Bahn a couple of years ago, the new trains are comfortable, have ample seating, and run on time. And the monthly ticket is cheaper than the cost of gas, not to mention maintenance and wear and tear on the car... and the parking tickets, since the legal parking places near my office are gone by 8 am.

I Have No Friends

2004-02-20T05:02:51+00:00

Nobody has invited me to join Orkut. But now it's too late. My feelings are already hurt. Sniff.

LaughingMeme: How to make a patch file

2004-02-19T08:02:38+00:00

LaughingMeme: How to make a patch file

Davids Medienkritik: German-American friendship in Huntsville, Alabama

2004-02-18T22:02:02+00:00

Davids Medienkritik: German-American friendship in Huntsville, Alabama

Linux rc scripts and lockfiles

2004-02-18T19:02:30+00:00

When I powered down one of our Notes servers running Linux last month to replace a bad drive in the RAID, I noticed that Notes was not powered down cleanly, even though we the stop script correctly set up under /etc/rc.d. Our Notes admins have various log rotation and safety commands in their server scripts, so they very much prefer that the server be powered down correctly. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong. The server started just fine on power up, calling the script on the command line worked just fine, but doing an actual shutdown seem to skip over the stop script completely.

I'm now setting up a new Notes server, and took the chance to figure out what's going wrong before it goes online. After about 20 tries, I finally saw the light. We had copied the start/stop script from a Solaris machine. It simply called "server start", "sever stop", or "server kill". Linux (at least Mandrake and Red Hat), however, keep lock files for their services under /var/lock/subsys. When /etc/rc.d/rc is called for a change in run level, it does not run the stop script if the lockfile does not exist. Therefore, our stop script for Notes was never called.

We never noticed this before since we don't have that many homemade services, and none of them ever complained when they were killed rather than shut down. And Linux servers don't need to be shut down that often. The problem doesn't seem to be that obvious; doing some Googling, I was unable to find any advice that rc scripts under Linux must use lock files in order to be called correctly.

In our case of Notes, the use of lock files is inconvenient at best. Our Notes server processes run as user 'notes' rather than root, and our Notes admins log in as 'notes' to do server maintainance. However 'notes' is unable to write to the lock directory, so the lock directory may correctly reflect the status of the Notes processes. But for now, we're just happy that our Notes log files no longer get blown away by a system reboot.

Transblawg: Thanks to a semicolon, gays and lesbians keep marrying in San Francisco

2004-02-18T08:02:29+00:00

Transblawg: Thanks to a semicolon, gays and lesbians keep marrying in San Francisco

German Engineering

2004-02-17T19:02:19+00:00

The tech project from hell: the German transport ministry today announced the cancellation of its contract with Toll Collect to build a satellite-based toll and tracking system for trucks. The system had been scheduled to go into operation in August 2003, less than a year after the project was awarded to the consortium led by Daimler Chrysler and Deutsche Telekom. After several catastrophic failures during live testing, Toll Collect is now unable to commit to any start date. The agreement finally fell apart over liability for lost revenue of over 180 million Euros per month.

Fly Into Kerry

2004-02-16T18:02:57+00:00

Google ad seen at Wonkette, where you can get the latest scoop on Kerry's intern. One scoop that's not there... according to Spiegel Online she was in Nairobi to interview with the German news agency dpa.

A Manual for Germany

2004-02-16T09:02:55+00:00

Via SWR: A Manual for Germany

Tobias Schwarz, A Fistful of Euros: Reforming Germany is not just hard. It is harder

2004-02-16T03:02:19+00:00

Tobias Schwarz, A Fistful of Euros: Reforming Germany is not just hard. It is harder

Fear and change

2004-02-15T18:02:49+00:00

Jeff Jarvis: Fear and change. I may not agree with all of his conclusions, but I do agree with his reasoning. Blaming the voters or the media or blaming anybody is not the answer. Voters are by definition always right, and if the Democrats want to beat Bush this fall, they have know what the voters want. And they don't want to be told that they are wrong. Outsiders wanting to understand the current mood in the US would do well to read these.

Square

2004-02-15T10:02:19+00:00

My home town in Minnesota is exactly 1 mile square, so it almost completely fits on this 1500x1500m picture from ACME Mapper (as seen at Don Park). Outside the town are just prairie fields. I spent pretty much my entire high school years within this square. (Well, not entirely... otherwise I never would have met this German girl I later married....)

Decidedly undecided

2004-02-15T06:02:12+00:00

Like Nico, I decided to take the 'Voter's Test' at NDR4 to determine which party in Hamburg would best reflect my position. The result was amusing.

"It is difficult to place you in a particular party. You correspond almost equally with FDP, CDU, and SPD." My politics are middle-of-the-road German (or maybe, to put it another way, simply wishy-washy).

Of course, I'm not actually eligible to vote in Hamburg (seeing as I don't live there and am not a German citizen), so I haven't really bothered to formulate exact positions. On law and order I'm rather liberal, I think the harbor and the Airbus plant should be expanded, I don't think the city needs to own hospitals and apartment complexes. That almost sounds like the FDP, except that the FDP is run by a bunch of idiots, especially in Hamburg.

Hamburg director wins Golden Bear for best film at Berlin Film Festival

2004-02-14T21:02:16+00:00

Hamburg director wins Golden Bear for best film at Berlin Film Festival

Mexican anti-American, pro-terrorist soccer hooligans

2004-02-14T20:02:22+00:00

BuzzMachine: Mexican anti-American, pro-terrorist soccer hooligans booing the American anthem and yelling "Osama! Osama!" at our players.

2004-02-14T14:02:26+00:00

Abendblatt: Diät-Rausch - so nimmt Amerika ab (how America loses weight)

Ill Wind Blowing?

2004-02-14T13:02:33+00:00

A reader mailed me this link from the Daily Telegraph on a couple in England living 500 m from 4 wind generators (similar to what we might face here): "One of the myths put out by the (wind energy) industry is that a wind farm sounds like a stream from 50 yards. We've got a stream running through our garden and if you stand by it, you can hear the whooshing of the turbines above the water. I've lived the same distance from the M3 and that didn't bother me anything like as much as the wind farm."

Mirow Blog, Revisited

2004-02-13T20:02:23+00:00

Here's a follow up on my post last month on the weblog of SPD leading candidate in Hamburg, Thomas Mirow. They've fixed some of the things I complained about in my first post. There's now a big link to the blog from the campaign's main web site. The posters at the blog now call themselves "Team Mirow" instead of pretending to be Thomas Mirow... so they're still anonymous, but at least they are being honest about it. And the weblog now bills itself as a 'meeting place for supporters', which means the weblog has a clear and achievable focus. So did the makers of the weblog read my post and take my comments seriously? Well, maybe one of them did. Is that the reason that Red/Green has pulled even with the CDU in the latest polls? I doubt it.

LazyWeb MT Plugins

2004-02-12T07:02:19+00:00

Our wind generator initiative is starting to post to the website (made with with Movable Type), and I've noticed a couple of things for which I wish I had a plugin. For one thing, some people tend to copy and paste long text from Word or from Outlook. (I try to tell them to link instead of copy, but they're volunteers and new at this.) The text tends to be word-wrapped with newlines within the paragraphs, which MT not so helpfully converts to line breaks. The otherwise excellent Textile plugin does the same thing. It would be nice to be able to turn convert-to-line-breaks on or off for individual posts, and still have paragraphs created with <p> tags.

The other thing is that these long posts are awkward for archive pages. Yes, MT lets you enter an Extended Entry or an Excerpt, but I don't want to bother our volunteers with extra fields. And using FirstNWords tends to cut sentences off in the middle of.... It would be nice if there were a tag like MTEntryFirstParagraph, which I could put in an archive template and know I'll also have complete sentences on the archive page.

There may already be easy ways to do this, and if not I could always write something myself. But by posting this, maybe somebody will have a pointer and save me the work of finding or writing it myself. :-)

Gone Home

2004-02-11T20:02:28+00:00

Unfortunately we have bad news about my aunt Violet, who I mentioned last week. The feeding tube did not take, her kidneys started to fail, and the decision was made to take no more heroic measues. She slept most of the weekend, and died quietly on Monday afternoon, at age 97. She was one of Christopher's biggest fans, always showing an album of the pictures we had sent and published on this website. Times like this it hurts to be so far away.

Rainy Day: Editors blog, 'Practical issues and real solutions for working editors and senior newsroom executives'

2004-02-11T19:02:41+00:00

Rainy Day: editorsblog.org, 'Practical issues and real solutions for working editors and senior newsroom executives'

Blood, Sweat and Tears

2004-02-10T10:02:33+00:00

Lilli asked "What the heck is a 'War President'?", Calpundit has an answer: "Who the hell does George Bush think he is, anyway? We haven't had a "wartime president" since FDR, and there's a good reason for that: you're only a wartime president if you act like you're at war. That means placing the country on a wartime footing, putting aside petty politics to forge a bipartisan wartime consensus, and telling the nation in no uncertain terms that sacrifices need to be made. George Bush has done none of those things."

The Command Post: Germany Blames U.S. For Acquittal

2004-02-10T03:02:35+00:00

The Command Post: Germany Blames U.S. For Acquittal

PapaScott Sells Out

2004-02-10T02:02:25+00:00

No, wait, change that title to "I'm Now A Professional Writer!". I now have Google Ads on my individual entry pages, and on the home page (if you look way at the bottom). I had actually applied to AdSense several months ago, but was rejected then (too many Christopher pics that week?). Inspired by the tasteful addition of ads by vowe, I reapplied.

I am mostly curious about what kind of ads will be selected for my posts. I am also curious whether my writing will change, knowing I will get paid more for better posts. I've already made one change. I had removed the entry title from the individual entries in an effort to discourage casual Googlers. But now I want Googlers to stop by, so I added the titles back. Bring them on!

Forty-two

2004-02-09T03:02:08+00:00

If 42 is the answer, then what is the question?

The Color Thing

2004-02-08T17:02:17+00:00

One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State I guess I missed this Republican are red, Democrats are blue meme. Here in Germany the parties have colors, too, but red is left. We have the red/green coalition, both Union parties are black, the Free Democrats are yellow (in color, not necessarily in courage), any far-right parties are brown, and the Democratic Socialists are red (in the "better dead than red" sense). Although now the CDU is trying to establish orange as a marketing color, so much that they've even colored Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust's face orange in his campaign posters. This is too confusing, and I'm color-blind anyway. Maybe it's best to stick to red and blue.

Palestine wants to join EU

2004-02-08T16:02:40+00:00

Palestine wants to join EU?!? can't wait to see the reaction from Shark Blog

Is NATO a partnership, or just a toolbox?

2004-02-08T08:02:51+00:00

Rainy Day: Is NATO a partnership, or just a toolbox?

Protest is American, Dissent is not treason

2004-02-08T07:02:17+00:00

Protest is American, Dissent is not treason

2004-02-06T12:02:25+00:00

Schröder to resign as SPD party chair

The art of updating gracefully

2004-02-06T04:02:45+00:00

One thing I've come to appreciate maintaining FreeBSD machines is the benefit of keeping systems continuously up to date. It's like going to the dentist... you are going to have to do it sometime anyway, and the sooner and more often you do it, the less it's going to hurt. FreeBSD makes it easy to keep current, since the applications in the ports are separated from the system itself. You can update the ports as needed, and I choose to update the system only every 2nd minor version with security patches as needed.

My co-workers on the Linux side were more of the "never touch a running system" philosophy, so I inherited a few machines with, shall we say, a few cobwebs. Yes, the services that are there still run, but eventually you're going to need a new feature or a security patch. It's then impossible to add anything new without compiling all components by hand, and even then it might be impossible to get a current PHP or OpenLDAP running. My oldest victim is a fax server with RedHat 6.something, with a 2.0 kernel from 1999.

My policy for Linux is that all servers will run a supported distribution. We will use stock RPMs when we can, and produce our own RPMs when we cannot. When security patches are no longer available, we will upgrade in place. I was able to upgrade 8.x machines to 9.2 without problem. For the 7.x machines it was easier to do a fresh install and migrate. That old RedHat machine is still waiting for me. But if I stick to my policy, I'm never going to have to do this again.

And it's a good idea to reboot every couple of months or so. We're not trying to set any uptime records here, and you need to know that in case of a power cut, everything will come back up.

Kiss and make up?

2004-02-06T04:02:37+00:00

Last night I saw a refreshingly civil discussion on Iraq on Berlin Mitte in ZDF, with Defense Minister Struck, Wolfgang Schäuble from the CDU, NATO General Secretary Scheffer, and the US Iraq advsor Randy Scheunemann. They're all heading to this year's Munich Conference on Security Policy. Judging by the tone, the conference may not be a American-European love-in, but there will be a lot of public displays of affection. Bussi bussi!

He's a free man now

2004-02-05T21:02:29+00:00

As expected, a court in Hamburg today acquitted 9/11 suspect Abdelghani Mzoudi due to lack of evidence. The prosecution will appeal the verdict, and the Hamburg Justice Ministry has announced they will begin deportation proceedings. The case against Mzoudi was thin to begin with. The investigation against him was still incomplete as he was arrested attempting to leave Germany. The United States did not share witnesses and evidence that could have led to a conviction, citing the need to keep certain information from becoming public. It's a difficult choice, deciding between a conviction of a terrroist collaborator and keeping information secret that could help future terrorists. It's better to let a guilty man go free than to endanger future victims, but it is a bitter decision for the families of past victims.

Only 15 percent of Canadians would vote for Bush.

2004-02-05T05:02:03+00:00

BuzzMachine: Only 15 percent of Canadians would vote for Bush. The rest apparently realize that they can't vote for him because they're Canadian.

Germany's Best Employers

2004-02-04T16:02:09+00:00

Germany's Best Employers

Anti-Americanism in Germany

2004-02-04T06:02:31+00:00

I remember when it meant something to be anti-American, when one had to really prove himself to earn this title. Kidnap Americans, take over their embassies, kill and maim them, burn their homes and businesses. Now that standard has been lowered. According to this thread at Medienkritik (a blog dedicated to anti-Americanism), these days it's enough to read Michael Moore and oppose the Iraq war. Sorry, for me expressing opinion is as American as it gets, and merely expressing opinions against a particular administration, especially when the same opinions are held by a good number of Americans, does not qualify one as anti-American. No, to become anti-American you need to threaten me for who I am, for the color of my passport. Mere disagreement does not qualify.

Otherwise, the thread brings a number of offensive anti-German prejudices to light. Germans are Nazis. Germans are greedy. Germans never forgive. Germans are undemocratic. Replace all the 'Germans' with 'Jews', and you'd have a number of quotes worthy of Martin Hohmann.

Nix Deutsch, documentary on grade school in Hamburg-Veddel

2004-02-04T05:02:49+00:00

Nix Deutsch, documentary on grade school in Hamburg-Veddel

How to upgrade Mandrake easily with only one reboot

2004-02-03T08:02:14+00:00

How to upgrade Mandrake easily with only one reboot

More States

2004-02-02T21:02:12+00:00

One thing I forgot to mention about states visited (other than that even Germans are jumping in) is that I've noticed that most folks have not been to Minnesota. Figures, it's not really a state that one travels through (unless one is taking a road trip to, say, Winnipeg). And even if one is flying Aeroflot-USA, nowadays you're more likely to change planes at Detroit or Memphis than at their home base of MSP. Or are people letting those 50 below temperatures scare them off? Wimps.

BackupPC: Performance Problems Solved?

2004-02-02T20:02:05+00:00

I haven't been keeping up my wiki like I promised. The performance problems with BackupPC I mentioned there have been getting progressively worse. A full backup was taking 48 hours, and the incremental would take 16 hours on the slowest machine on a bad day.

My problem seems to have been using an ext3 file system... the millions of inodes are too much for ext3 to handle. I found a post on the backuppc-users mailing list at SourceForge (the list is borked at the moment, I can't like to the entry) suggested using reiserfs or xfs instead.

Since I have no experience with xfs, I choose reiser. Over the weekend, I reformatted (taking a PartImage first, 80GB takes 8 hours), and the full backup was done in 15 hours. This evening the incremental was done in 3 hours. If this keeps up even after we have a month of backups on the partition, I'll be very happy.

One thing still bothers me, though. I was able to see that things were slow. The load was high, all of the BackupPC processes were waiting for something. But we couldn't see what. I assumed they were waiting on the network, that the clients were slow (they all had high iowait), but it turned out they were waiting on the file system on the server. Shouldn't I have seen that in the system statistics? Where should I have looked?

In Minnesota it was so cold they closed the Ice Palace

2004-02-02T14:02:11+00:00

via Dave's Picks: In Minnesota it was so cold they closed the Ice Palace

Clean energy leads to ecological travesty

2004-02-02T07:02:13+00:00

via Shark Blog: Clean energy leads to ecological travesty

Boing Boing: How to get spyware-free RealPlayer through the BBC

2004-02-01T17:02:30+00:00

Boing Boing: How to get spyware-free RealPlayer through the BBC

State of Mind

2004-02-01T14:02:23+00:00

Counting states visited seems to be the meme of the weekend, so here's my map of states visited. Most of the red spots are from two moves cross-crountry (CA-MN and MN-AZ) and two bus trips (NYC and DC).

But seeing peoples' maps reminds me of my great-aunt Violet, who managed to visit all state capitols back when there were only 48. She lived on a ranch in Nebraska back when there were still real cowboys. She turns 98 this year, and she's been in the hospital the past two weeks with pneumoni a. At 98, small problems can complicate quickly, and in her case she is unable to swallow and therefore cannot eat or drink. She's awake and alert, and has opted for a feeding tube. We're hoping she can hang in there.

Senseless violence

2004-01-30T21:01:39+00:00

Senseless violence in primetime television this evening... Dortmund vs. Schalke on ARD.

Secret Witness

2004-01-30T20:01:39+00:00

The supposed Iranian ex-agent Zakeri testified today in the Mzoudi terror trial, and was not very convincing, according to radio reports and Spiegel Online. Zakeri, who claims also to have worked for the CIA and the German BND, could only say that he heard from an unidentified Iranian official that Mzoudi was among the 9/11 plotters. Hearsay from an unreliable witness. Mzoudi is almost certain to acquitted when the verdict is announced, now scheduled for next Thursday, unless the prosecution finds another secret witness.

2020 Hindsight: Pixar dumps Disney

2004-01-30T10:01:13+00:00

2020 Hindsight: Pixar dumps Disney

Getting started with Window

2004-01-30T05:01:58+00:00

via Laughing Meme: Getting started with Windows

Kind robots, indeed.

2004-01-30T05:01:25+00:00

I'm not particularly interested in all the Mars missions going on, but this picture made me laugh out loud.

Attention Blogspot Users

2004-01-30T05:01:01+00:00

(Yes, Lilli, I'm talking to you!) If you want to make it easier for people to read your blog, please turn on your site feed! In your Blogger interface, go to Settings -> Site Feed, set Publish Site Feed to Yes and Descriptions to Full. Then those of us with RSS/Atom aggregators will be able to see your new posts right away. I even started a test blogspot blog to see how it works. Thank you!

Christopher's exhausted

2004-01-29T21:01:49+00:00

Christopher's exhausted today, but he's doing fine. Papa's just exhausted.

linux stole sco code dot com

2004-01-28T15:01:12+00:00

linux stole sco code dot com

Surgery Update

2004-01-28T14:01:53+00:00

Christopher came through with flying colors. Took just 30 minutes, slept it off for a couple of hours, and now we're home. Today he can eat anything he wants and watch videos for hours on end. Tomorrow the normal rules apply again.

Real World Style: 7-10 Split

2004-01-27T22:01:49+00:00

Real World Style: 7-10 Split

Tomorrow is Christopher's adenoidectomy. Wish us well!

2004-01-27T21:01:40+00:00

Tomorrow is Christopher's adenoidectomy. Wish us well!

Christopher and Bio-Milk

2004-01-27T20:01:16+00:00

Kids adapt quickly. Christopher now asks for Bio-Milk and Strawberry Yoghurt from McDonald's. Really.

Chipolte's buys organic pork

2004-01-27T20:01:09+00:00

rebecca's pocket: Chipolte's buys organic pork

Say the magic words

2004-01-27T19:01:30+00:00

Three weeks ago my wife had her purse stolen. All her cash and cards were gone. Credit cards, EC cards, DL, ID card, frequent flyer cards. She noticed within 30 minutes and had all her cards stopped. No harm done, except for the cash, and the temporary emotional distress.

But the bank, when stopping the EC cards, stops all cards for the account. So my EC cards were stopped as well. And since we use an online bank, there's no brick-and-mortar branch where we can make withdrawls. We've gone through this before, new cards take about a week. So we wait for the new cards to arrive. And wait. And wait. We nearly had a crisis when she needed a new outfit for work, since her favorite shop doesn't accept credit cards (which arrived after just 2 days). Good thing we know of a supermarket that takes Visa, we don't starve.

After 2 weeks, my wife calls the bank. When she called to have the cards stopped, she never said that she wanted a replacement card. So it was never ordered. New cards take about a week. So we wait.

Today a card arrives in the mail. One card. For my wife. Not me. We call the bank. When she ordered a replacement cards, she never said that the partner card needed to be replaced as well. So it was never ordered. New cards take about a week.

Right now my cash reserve consists of coins all 20 cents or less. My wife flies to Barcelona tomorrow for 3 days on business. I hope she leaves me some spending money.

DeanBlog and MirowBlog

2004-01-27T12:01:59+00:00

Most of what Dave says (well, said... he's since edited his post) about the Dean blog can be applied to MirowFuerHamburg as well: "Lots of epitaphs about Dean blogging and how it helped or hurt the campaign. They're all making the same basic mistake. They never did blogging at the Dean campaign. They have a house organ, it was a fictional thing, always glad about the good news, even when the news was bad. Weblogs are grounded in reality, they report on anything that an intelligent and curious person would want to know. The Dean blog assumes that you are a convert to the cause. The Dean weblog is not a trial of blogs in a presidential campaign, when that day comes, there won't be a disconnect between the candidate... and what's on the Web."

Nico eats his own dogfood

2004-01-26T22:01:37+00:00

Nico eats his own dogfood

Changed My Mind

2004-01-26T21:01:56+00:00

I decided not to wait for the New Hampshire... I sent my absentee ballot for the Arizona Primary already late last week. I won't say who I voted for, you'll have to hover over the link.

aaronland: atom03-to-rss XSLT stylesheets

2004-01-26T13:01:57+00:00

aaronland: atom03-to-rss XSLT stylesheets

LWN: Cooperative Linux, run Linux kernel and apps under Windows

2004-01-26T13:01:05+00:00

LWN: Cooperative Linux, run Linux kernel and apps under Windows

Spiegel Online: Nina Hagen: Secret Wedding in Denmark

2004-01-26T03:01:59+00:00

Spiegel Online: Nina Hagen: Secret Wedding in Denmark

Brad DeLong: The Ten Americans Who Did the Most to Win the Cold War

2004-01-26T02:01:53+00:00

Brad DeLong: The Ten Americans Who Did the Most to Win the Cold War

Chicago Boyz: Bruce Schneier on Homeland Security

2004-01-25T21:01:50+00:00

Chicago Boyz: Bruce Schneier on Homeland Security

IKEA as a video game

2004-01-25T18:01:11+00:00

IKEA as a video game

Kerry has slight edge over Clark, Dean in Arizona

2004-01-25T16:01:07+00:00

AZ Central: Kerry has slight edge over Clark, Dean in Arizona

Magpie and Atom

2004-01-25T15:01:56+00:00

MagpieRSS now has experimental support for Atom, and FeedOnFeeds has implemented it. So you don't need my silly patch anymore.

Defaced

2004-01-25T11:01:29+00:00

Some people didn't like our posters.

Mirow Blog

2004-01-24T13:01:27+00:00

As can be read at the usual north German blogging suspects, the SPD candidate in Hamburg Thomas Mirow has a campaign weblog, the first in Europe.

However, my first impression of MirowFuerHamburg is exactly that of Mirow himself: flat and lifeless. He's not Howard Dean, he's a quiet party insider. While I might want Dean on my side in a street fight, I would only want Mirow on my side in a room full of accountants. As for the weblog itself, the (anonymous) fluffy postings remind me of the pseudo 'weblog' at GeorgeWBush.com.

The weblog doesn't seem to fit in the SPD campaign concept of focusing on issues in contrast to Pretty Boy von Buest. I have the feeling the weblog was started because a couple of techies thought it would be cool to have a weblog, rather than being part of a well thought-out campaign strategy.

If the Hamburg SPD had been serious about using weblogs as a politcial tool, they would have started six months ago, before the self-destruction of the CDU/Schill/FDP coaliition, not just 35 days before the election. Now, it will just be lost in the whole 'campaign internet presence'. They don't even a link to to weblog at the main campaign site. To be fair, the weblog went online ahead of schedule, and may yet develop into something interesting and useful. But for now, it's neither.

On the other hand, after Die Zeit it's yet another coup for the Hamburg blogging service blogg.de.

2004-01-24T12:01:31+00:00

US CIS: How Do I Bring My Fiancé(e) to the United States?

Windmill Poster

2004-01-24T07:01:17+00:00

Soon to be seen in and around Jesteburg, advertising our info-meeting on 30 Jan.

I Am The Walrus

2004-01-22T22:01:45+00:00

Two years ago we had 5 network sysadmins at our company. Last year we had 3. One left last month, another broke her arm and is out sick, and third one is me. And I am alone until my colleague can peck at a keyboard. And our network is no less complex than when there were 5 of us. Until now I've had nothing to do with our internal routing, I was strictly external. Up until last month I deferred firewall requests to my more knowledgable colleagues. Now, I am the firewall.

I've been able to fake my way through most problems. A couple of routing problems I was not able to fake my through, and thus I was able to "gain valuable experience" (i.e. learn by screwing up). Hint: a router sends packets exactly how it is told. If it isn't told where to find an address, the packets disappear, just like luggage at the airport without a checkin tag . My co-workers are at least sympathetic than I am covering bases for 3 peopel. But my brain hurts at the end of the day.

There is hope on the horizon. Our accomodation, flight, and rental car for Florida in April are as of this evening all booked.

Caught in the Machine

2004-01-22T09:01:29+00:00

NY Times: Trip Home From Europe Becomes Kafkaesque Ordeal "A German woman married to a Brooklyn schoolteacher had been told that she had all her papers in order when she took a quick trip to show off her infant daughter to her parents in Germany. But her return home in late December turned surreal and terrifying when Homeland Security officials at Kennedy Airport rejected her travel documents, confiscated her passport, then detained her and the 3-month-old overnight in a room with shackled drug suspects. They let her go only after ordering her to leave the country no later than tomorrow."

BBC: New evidence halts 9/11 verdict

2004-01-21T21:01:59+00:00

BBC: New evidence halts 9/11 verdict

Michael Himsolt: Double Parking

2004-01-21T20:01:53+00:00

Michael Himsolt: Double Parking

Blog Editor for Movable Type?

2004-01-20T22:01:31+00:00

For the editors of our neighborhood initiative website I'd like to find a blogging ap that makes editing under Windows as easy as possbile. Is there a good WYSIWYG blog editor out there? Zempt looks nice, and the price is right, but it isn't WYSIWYG. BlogJet isn't ready yet. Am I missing something obvious? Or should I be looking at inline solutions like htmlArea?

Update Heiko pointed me to w.bloggar, which again isn't WYSIWYG (but like Zempt has a preview window) but is localized for German. I'm posting this update with it.

Those Crazy Iwegians

2004-01-20T04:01:31+00:00

You just never know what they are going to do. Kerry 38%, Edwards 32%, Dean 18%, Gephardt 11% (and out). And I'll wait for New Hampshire before I even start to make up my mind.

Expat Americans launch vote drive

2004-01-20T03:01:55+00:00

BBC: Expat Americans launch vote drive

American Voices Abroad - Berlin

2004-01-20T03:01:50+00:00

American Voices Abroad - Berlin

I Have A Voice

2004-01-19T20:01:25+00:00

Appropriate for MLK Day and Iowa Caucus Day, I received my absentee ballot for the Arizona Democratic Primary today. The Maricopa County Recorder was kind enough to send it by Express Mail to make sure my vote can be counted.

I remember my first caucus, back in 1980 in Minnesota. I was a high school senior, and belonged to the dark side (Independent Republicans, as they were known in MN back then). I forget who I supported for President (not Reagan... Bush? Dole?). But I did get elected to the county, and then the congressional district convention. One of the candidates looked me up at my after-school job, cleaning the meat market at the local grocers. He shook my hand, even though I was covered with blood and beef fat. Even though he wasn't local and was too conservative for my taste, he got my vote, he won the nomination, and was elected. Vin Weber was one of the conservative stars in the House in the 1980s.

That August, one day before nominating Ronald Reagan, the National Republican Convention voted to drop support for the Equal Rights Amendment, and I vowed to never support the Republicans again. That fall I voted for John Anderson.

Anil Dash: Microsoft *nix

2004-01-19T13:01:54+00:00

Anil Dash: Microsoft *nix

2004-01-17T12:01:39+00:00

We finally have a humble start on the web site for Lüllauer Gegen-Wind, our village initiative against wind generators. Our neighbor Michael has gathered a ton of material on the subject, and my wfie and I are trying to filter and organize that information. I used Movable Type to set it up, but it's not a weblog yet, no comments or trackbacks, and we still have the default MT design. But I thought I'd mention it here for the benefit of Google, as well as for any other readers who are interested.

BSD For Linux Users

2004-01-17T07:01:31+00:00

BSD For Linux Users

Transblawg: How to get married in Germany, Denmark and Switzerland

2004-01-15T17:01:04+00:00

Transblawg: How to get married in Germany, Denmark and Switzerland

Big media meets big blog(g)

2004-01-15T17:01:01+00:00

German weekly newspaper Die Zeit now has a weblog at blogg.de (via Heiko).

Tim Bray: Laws of Explanation

2004-01-15T05:01:36+00:00

Tim Bray: Laws of Explanation 1) When you?re explaining something to somebody and they don?t get it, that?s not their problem, it?s your problem. 2) When someone?s explaining something to you and you?re not getting it, it?s not your problem, it?s their problem.

I'm An Expert

2004-01-14T19:01:23+00:00

German taxpayers will be pleased to learn that they are no longer paying me not to work. My colleague on her arm and is out indefinitely with a compound fracture, so I'm back full time. And I get to fake being a Solaris expert until she comes back. A calendar left in my office by a former co-worker reads 'Guessing right three times makes you an expert.' I've been guessing right so far, even with the RAID for which I had neither a handbook nor a clue.

In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.

2004-01-13T19:01:06+00:00

Mark Twain: In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.

Hamburg Election Blog

2004-01-12T14:01:45+00:00

Hamburg Election Blog

Blogs and German Politics

2004-01-11T20:01:01+00:00

Some interesting thoughts at jimmiz journal on the (lack of) blogging and German politics (follow the links there to Nico, Heiko and Moe, I'm too lazy to type them in here), all the more interesting since Adam Curry seems to getting parties and politicians in The Netherlands to start blogging. But Germany does have the SPD in the Hamburg district of Horn, which has been blogging (with Movable Type) since the beginning of December. Keep it up!

College course on building IKEA furniture

2004-01-11T10:01:57+00:00

College course on building IKEA furniture

Living in the Past

2004-01-11T09:01:06+00:00

tagesschau.de: "Tens of thousands in Berlin rememembered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht with a silent march through the memorial Berlin-Friedrichsfelde. The founders of the German Communist Party were killed on January 15, 1919. Wreaths were laid by leading PDS figures, including party leader Lothar Bisky... The traditional march is one of the largest demonstrations in the German capital."

Flip the little Dolphin

2004-01-10T21:01:21+00:00

Yesterday Christopher picked out a picture book from the Carlsen 'Lesemaus' series. It is about a baby dolphin, including pictures of the dolphin being born and nursing. OK, we can handle questions about that. The birth isn't so interesting for Christopher yet, but he noticed the nursing. 'The baby dolphin is drinking, like I used to drink from Mama!' Is his memory really that good? Not really... when I read to him this evening, he said he used to drink from Papa. Mama could only laugh.

Two Polls

2004-01-10T13:01:25+00:00

Polls don't mean anything come election day, but they are interesting nonetheless. The ARD DeutschlandTREND shows the Union falling below an absolute majority in the "Sunday question" for the first time in 5 months, but still with 48%. Winners were not red/green (26%/10%), but the FDP (7%) and the PDS (5%!). Has the far-left flight from the SPD to the ex-communists begun?

Meanwhile locally, 7 weeks before the Hamburg election Mayor von Beust and the CDU have a comfortable lead (47%) over Mirow and the SPD (30%). The Greens have 11%, FDP 2%, old Schill 2%, and new Schill (Pro-DM) 4%. With coalition partners, von Beust is only 6 points ahead of red/green, and if Schill somehow gets over 5% all bets are off.

Practice Fee

2004-01-09T21:01:00+00:00

All week long we've been hearing stories about the chaos caused by the new 'practice fee' (Praxisgebühr) for health care introduced at the beginning of the year. Applied to those with public health insurance (90% of all Germans), 10 Euros is to be paid for each doctor visited per quarter in cash at the time of the first visit. The fee is waived for children and for referrals. The idea is to discourage patients from going directly to specialists without a referral from their family physician. Although the fee is collected by physicians, it goes entirely to the insurance funds. The physicians bear the administrative costs and the risk for those patients they treat but who refuse to pay.

But the devil is in the details. Germans in the public insurance system have never seen a bill for their health care... now they suddenly have to pay before they see a doctor. The fee also applies to emergency rooms and ambulances (unless you called the ambulance through 110), so emergency personnel need to carry cash boxes and issue receipts. (The fee also applies to those given care involuntarily... imagine trying to collect cash from a drunk being admitted to detox.) The fee applies to welfare recipients and pensioners. There is a cap of 2% of annual income (1% for the 'chronically ill', which the law doesn't really define) for all practice fees and co-payments... so make sure you save all your receipts.

The fee was part of the bi-partisan health reform law of last year, so both major parties are to blame. Best of all, the members of Bundestag exempted themselves from the fee, along with civil servents. Instead of 10 Euros per doctor per quarter, they pay a flat 20 Euros per year.

My guess is the practice fee will quickly be repealed.

ARD Tagesschau: News in English

2004-01-07T21:01:12+00:00

ARD Tagesschau: News in English

Otitis Media

2004-01-06T21:01:08+00:00

As the first consequence of our visit with the speech therapist last month, we took Christopher to a ear-nose-throat specialist today. He told us what we already suspected: Christopher has fluid behind the eardrums in both ears, his adenoids are enlarged, and he is a classic candidate for an adenoidectomy. I was surprised that he recommended surgery right away (I had a similar operation at age 8), but doing some reading I learned that such a procedure at age 4 is not unusual, and these days can be done as an out-patient. We've made an appointment for the end of the month. We also had a hearing test done, but since Christopher was somewhat uncooperative, the results were inconclusive. He only hears what he wants to hear. Don't we all?

Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP)

2004-01-06T19:01:04+00:00

Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP)

Pay Attention!

2004-01-04T20:01:30+00:00

This is what I get for not paying attention. I've been assuming that I wouldn't have a voice in deciding the Democratic presidential nominee, but now I see that Arizona, the state where I was last a resident and thus where I am registered to vote, holds their primary on February 3. And I should have requested my ballot by the end of December! I'll rush my request, and I guess I'll have to inform myself and make up my mind after all... Dean or Clark or someone else? The last time I did this was in 1988 in the precinct caucuses in Minnesota. Back then I was a Jackson (as in Jesse) delegate. Times have changed.

Basement Nostalgia

2004-01-04T13:01:42+00:00

Christopher no longer fits in his baby car seat.

PapaScott 3rd site on Google for "earthquake in iran"

2004-01-03T19:01:47+00:00

PapaScott 3rd site on Google for "earthquake in iran"?!?

Share Your OPML: View Scott Hanson's Feeds

2004-01-03T18:01:56+00:00

Share Your OPML: View Scott Hanson's Feeds

Really Stupid Atom Support

2004-01-03T16:01:55+00:00

(for Magpie RSS 0.52 and Feed on Feeds 0.1.1). Many blogs are already sporting Atom 0.3 feeds, and some have even declared their RSS to be deprecated. So I decided to try to bolt Atom support onto my aggregator of choice. It turned out to be pretty easy, requiring patching just 2 files.

However, my approach is very simplistic, simply representing Atom items in Magpie such that FoF can understand and display them. I'm sure that Kellan and Steve will eventually fully support Atom feeds. But until they do, here is the patch to init.php and parse_rss.inc. I thought about calling it 'Really Stupid Support for Atom', but the acronym 'RSS for Atom' would have confusing to say the least.

Disclaimer: this works for me, at least for the three Atom feeds I've tried. It may not work for you.

If you're interested in the gory details, I basically made 3 changes:

Magpie will parse anything that remotely resembles RSS without bothering to validate it. While RSS is a 'channel' containing several 'items', Atom is a 'feed' containing several 'entries'. So I just told magpie to treat a 'feed' as a channel and an 'entry' as an item.
Magpie doesn't parse XML attributes at all. However, 'links' in Atom are defined purely as attributes, and each 'feed' or 'entry' can have several links, while in RSS a 'link' is simply a string. So I had Magpie create an array of items for each link.
I then told FoF about the new elements in the array, for example to use the 'tagline' for the 'description' if it exists. I also wrote a function for FoF to select the first appropriate link if the link is an array instead of a string.

Terror alarm: Homburg, not Hamburg?

2004-01-03T12:01:09+00:00

Terror alarm: Homburg, not Hamburg?

Sun hands Cobalt an open-source lifeline

2004-01-03T09:01:40+00:00

Sun hands Cobalt an open-source lifeline

Microsoft to acquire BEA?

2004-01-02T19:01:03+00:00

Microsoft to acquire BEA?

Brazil fingerprints and photographs arriving Americans

2004-01-02T11:01:41+00:00

Brazil fingerprints and photographs arriving Americans

SMS Spam Wanted

2003-12-31T09:12:30+00:00

Russell Beattie wants you to send him an SMS for the New Year. Maybe I should give his number to my cell provider e-plus? They send enough SMS spam to keep anyone happy!

Update: Terror Alarm in Hamburg

2003-12-31T07:12:15+00:00

Nothing was found, and the information may not have been as concrete as officials in Hamburg had implied. Federal Interior Minister Schily said last night that he regrets that the police action in Hamburg prematurely made the warnings public. Hamburg officials may be nervous as a result of the ongoing political turmoil in the city; the parliament dissolved itself yesterday to clear the way for early elections in February.

Terror Alarm in Hamburg

2003-12-30T17:12:46+00:00

The Bundeswehr Hospital in Hamburg was supposed to be target of a car bomb terrorist attack, according to the Interioir Ministry in Hamburg. The area around the hospital in Hamburg Wandsbek was sealed off this afternoon by police. ARD is reporting that the warning came from the US, namely the CIA. BBC, Netzeitung, ZDF and n-tv also have the story.

Partytime

2003-12-28T18:12:42+00:00

Today we had all the relatives over for Christopher's birthday (a day late, but he can't read a calendar yet). As a highlight we served Alwin's cheesecake, which went over very well with the guests, even my mother-in-law the super-baker (although next time I will use Schmand instead of Saure Sahne for sour cream). And Christopher scored more presents. But now he should be gifted out for the next year.

Caught

2003-12-27T20:12:08+00:00

Here's Christopher re-enacting the final scene of Finding Nemo in the bathtub.

Earthquake in Iran

2003-12-27T06:12:06+00:00

Yesterday's earthquake in SE Iran may have killed more than 20,000. The first helpers from the SEEBA (Rapid Deployment Unit Search and Rescue) of the German Technisches Hilfswerk have already arrived. ARD lists bank accounts for donations for the victims.

Big Day

2003-12-27T05:12:46+00:00

Christopher, our pride and joy, turns 4 today!

Goose Dinner

2003-12-26T11:12:07+00:00

Chrismas isn't even over yet, but we are already getting ready for the next big event. As has been our tradition for the past 4 years, we will once again have goose dinner on December 26th. This year we have a goose breast, with red cabbage from the freezer, and potatoes for the non-Atkins eaters. And we have a story to tell to Christopher.

Santa Has Landed

2003-12-24T16:12:23+00:00

For those following Santa's progress, we can report that he arrived in Jesteburg at approximately 4 pm, leaving a Playmobil RC train in exchange for Christopher's entire pacifier collection. We hope that Santa will find good homes for the pacifiers.

Espresso Love

2003-12-24T06:12:45+00:00

Doc Searls describes his Starbucks Barista espresso machine. It's his third machine, list price $399, 2 year guarantee, and "if you use it heavily it should last at least that long". We have a 10 year old Bosch Espresso Cup (mostly plastic, cost DM 99 at the time) and a €1.99 milk frother. And we buy pre-ground espresso from our discounter. What are we missing?

Christmas Baking

2003-12-23T18:12:02+00:00

is easy with ready-made cookie dough from the supermarket.

Speech Therapy

2003-12-23T17:12:51+00:00

We had our initial appointment with the child speech therapist yesterday. He confirmed that Christopher is way behind in his speech development for his age. This could be caused by a combination of environmental factors: being a (spoiled) only child, having two working parents, spending full days in day care, and having a non-native-speaking parent (which I can confirm; I simply have no idea how well a 4-year-old German child should speak, and I have no ear for subtle mistakes).

Of course we should check for physical causes as well. His 4-year checkup is beginning of next month, and we should tell the pediatrician about our concerns. He hasn't been sick the last year at all, but he had a couple of ear infections when he was younger, and he probably inherited my susceptibility to ear, nose and throat infections. I think I remember seeing a speech therapist as a child (but I'm not sure... Grandma?). If my memory is not invented, I remember it as something I did not enjoy.

We'll probably start week appointments at the end of January. My shortened hours at work will make it easier to plan. Meanwhile, we (espcially Mama, maybe Oma) are to read with (not to) him as much as she can, and let him explain the stories in his own words. I was right to stop speaking English with him for now. We do not need to be concerned about stuttering at this point, as it is normal at this age for children to think more quickly than they can speak. But at 4 he should be able to speak clearly and in complete sentences.

Tree

2003-12-21T20:12:06+00:00

Three guesses what we did today (actually, what Mama and Christopher did... I'm allergic to pine trees, and try to keep my distance).

U.S. Courts Reject Detention Policy in 2 Terror Cases

2003-12-19T05:12:28+00:00

U.S. Courts Reject Detention Policy in 2 Terror Cases

Public Service Announcement

2003-12-18T18:12:17+00:00

A reminder to the German blogging community that blogging is not about awards. It's time to lighten up.

Blockbuster chief: End DVD regional codes, thwart pirates

2003-12-17T17:12:21+00:00

Blockbuster chief: End DVD regional codes, thwart pirates

Joel on Software - Biculturalism

2003-12-15T20:12:28+00:00

Joel on Software - Biculturalism

ONLamp.com: Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves

2003-12-15T20:12:18+00:00

ONLamp.com: Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves

2003-12-15T13:12:57+00:00

Hamburg Blogger-Glühwein: Dienstag, 19 Uhr, Gänsemarkt

Snow

2003-12-15T07:12:52+00:00

English Books in Hamburg

2003-12-15T06:12:10+00:00

English Books in Hamburg

Split the difference

2003-12-15T04:12:14+00:00

I'm up early, but the politicians are just going to bed. At 3 am the government and the opposition announced an agreement on tax cuts, unemployment and welfare reform, subsidy cuts, flexilbility in the job market, Agenda 2010 and just about everything else that Schröder wanted but was being blocked by the Bundesrat. It took the big guns to get it done... Schröder, Merkel, Fischer, and Stoiber all appeared at the marathon conference committee meeting (oh, and Westerwelle too).

The result was to split everything down the middle. The tax cut for 2004 is half of what Schröder wanted, financed only 25% by borrowing. The subsidies for commuters and home owners will be cut by 30%. Protection against dismissal applies now to firms with 10 or more employees instead of 5. Local governments will have the option to manage long-term unemployed. Local governments get a bigger slice of business taxes. The question of exemptions to national union contracts was postponed.

Everyone got only half of what they wanted, but at least they got something, which is more than one can say about the EU summit in Brussels the day before.

Devo Design

2003-12-14T19:12:55+00:00

If you're observant, you'll have noticed that the design of this site has been simplified (as if it weren't simple before), inspired by recent changes at Scripting News and Scobleizer. I've integrated the Quick Links into the main blog and simplified the permalinks (junking the 'Posted by Blah Blah Blah' bit). The Quick Links now have permalinks of their own and take comments.

What looks simple actually took a bit of effort to pull off, since Movable Type isn't able to easily cusomize layouts based on category. The ~450 Quick Link entries needed to be assigned a category and moved to the main blog, which was easiest to do directly with MySQL. I wanted to not print titles for the Quick Links, which required the Extended Comments plugin from Brad Choate. For the remaining entries, I wanted to put the title within the paragraph tags for the entry body. This required a custom convert line break setting (break lines with br, but don't insert p tags), using the Format Breaks plugin from Brad Choate. Then I wanted to trwiddle the formatting for entries that either begin or end with an image, which required the Regex plugin from (you guessed it) Brad Choate. It would have been a lot easier if he packaged all his plugins together :-).

WorldWideKlein suggests...

2003-12-14T19:12:25+00:00

WorldWideKlein suggests actor to play Saddam in the inevitable movie

Saddam Hussein captured!

2003-12-14T11:12:53+00:00

Saddam Hussein captured!

Christopher in the Press

2003-12-13T07:12:37+00:00

Our Tagesmutter was recently honored by the city of Buchholz for her volunteer work. The local paper took her picture with her dog and Christopher, a 'satisfied customer'.

Bilingual Education

2003-12-12T20:12:05+00:00

In my last set of Christopher pictures, hans asks whether we are raising Christopher bilingually. The answer is more complicated than just yes or no (although this quick answer is I don't speak English with Christopher as much as I should).

In theory, my wife would speak German with Christopher and I would speak English. In practice, I find it difficult to consistently speak English with him. Unlike most of the Anglo-German couples we know, we speak German rather than English at home. Actually, we agreed to speak the language of whatever country we're in, so when we're in the States we speak (mostly) English, and when we are in France or Italy... then we are in trouble. Anyway, while this was good for my German, it means I am totally out of the habit of speaking English around the house. I have to remember to make the effort, and Christopher answers in German anyway.

Most bilingual kids we know are like that. They understand the English-speaking parent perfectly, but will answer in German. Only when visiting with relatives that speak no German at all are they willing to speak English. Only later (around 10 or 12) are they willing to speak the second language on their own. The exception is when the parent pretends not to understand German at all... and I'm not willing to do that.

We're also a bit reluctant to push English on Christopher right now, since we're concerned about his speech skills in general. He speaks somewhat unclearly, and our day care provider has recommended a speech therapist. Our initial appointment is this month.

This is a local organization that offers English classes for kids as young as 3. We even took Christopher to a couple of classes, but he wasn't ready to be left alone and it wasn't worth my taking 3 hours off work to drive him to a 45 minute class where he didn't want to be. So, I'm sure that Christopher will someday be bilingual, but he isn't yet.

German Judge Frees Qaeda Suspect; Cites U.S. Secrecy

2003-12-12T13:12:39+00:00

German Judge Frees Qaeda Suspect; Cites U.S. Secrecy

German vocabulary: das Skriptgirl

2003-12-12T10:12:10+00:00

German vocabulary: das Skriptgirl

Mixed Signals

2003-12-11T20:12:54+00:00

I'm sure everyone has heard about the Pentagon's decision to bar countries which opposed the war from reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Now, the Pentagon can award contracts however it wants, and 6 months ago I would have expected such a pronouncement. Now it seems very confusing, since all the signals the US has been sending this fall is that it wants international help in Iraq, even from Germany, even in small amounts, and even if only in the form of development aid and debt relief. The contracts could have been quietly directed to countries found suitable. Instead, Wolfowitz is flipping a very visible middle finger in the direction of Old Europe. It makes you wonder what Washington really wants.

It may even make you wonder if Washington itself knows what it wants, since Bush was on the phone the next day with France, Germany and Russia trying to talk debt relief. This makes a parliamentary cabinet look good in comparison, where ministers are politicians rather than policy experts. The politicians may be lacking in technical knowledge, but they do at least have basic communication and coordination skills that seem to be lacking in the 'experts' in Washington, even after 3 years in office.

Economically, such a boycott never makes sense. The boycotter, by accepting a second-best offer or worse, always suffers more than the boycottee (assuming that the agents are otherwise acting rationally, which is a huge leap of faith for government contracts, I admit). It's like me cutting off my nose to spite your face.

Besides, the amount of money involved is too small to influence future policy. Everything else being equal, how much business would Germany have obtained? Maybe tens of millions? In a 2 trillion dollar economy? That's not going to influence any politician, unless it's delivered in unmarked bills in black suitcase. But that's already been tried...

Hamburg court frees 9/11 suspect

2003-12-11T20:12:06+00:00

Hamburg court frees 9/11 suspect

Music

2003-12-11T18:12:47+00:00

Here again is Christopher's Springsteen imitation. Since we sold the high chair, he now has to build his own mike stand.

Christopher also plays drums.

Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals

2003-12-11T05:12:20+00:00

Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals

My further adventures with BackupPC

2003-12-10T20:12:58+00:00

My further adventures with BackupPC

You blog, don't you?

2003-12-10T15:12:16+00:00

You blog, don't you?

Wimpy Wiki

2003-12-10T10:12:30+00:00

Having been inspired by Simon Williston's post on using a wiki for simpler content managment, I've set up a read-only wiki of my own as a public notebook for my work. There's not much there yet, but maybe I can all my technical-oriented posts there, thus saving this space for important stuff like Christopher pictures.

Hamburg coalition collapses, new elections on 29 Feb

2003-12-09T13:12:22+00:00

Hamburg coalition collapses, new elections on 29 Feb

Canadians too patriotic for sensitive Americans

2003-12-09T05:12:50+00:00

Canadians too patriotic for sensitive Americans

Unilateral Peace

2003-12-08T09:12:36+00:00

Unilateral Peace

The American Dory

2003-12-07T19:12:20+00:00

Christopher's Christmas package from Minnesota arrived yesterday. And, I admit it, I just had to take a peek... at the Finding Nemo DVD. Since the film was just released in Germany, it will be months before the DVD is available here. But it's OK. I'm an American citizen. I'm allowed to view Region 1 DVDs.

My main suspicion was confirmed, namely that Anke Engelke, the German voice of Dory, is a thousand times better than whoever did the original American Dory. But I was also disappointed. Dory's best line ('Kennen wir uns?', when she doesn't recognize Marlin the first time) is a dud in English ('Can I help you?').

Goodbye Lenin sweeps Europe Film Prize

2003-12-07T09:12:44+00:00

Goodbye Lenin sweeps Europe Film Prize

The Ghost of Schill

2003-12-07T07:12:38+00:00

The ghost of Schill continues to haunt the coalition in Hamburg. He was quiet for a while after having been tossed out of the Senate by Mayor von Beust. Last weekend he was re-elected as the state party chair.

In the past week, however, he has returned to his old self, attacking von Beust, his successor Interior Minister Nockelmann. A new role in this coalition is unthinkable, given that von Beust has sworn to never again sit at the same table as Schill.

For his party, one week of the new-old Schill was enough. The national party board has dismissed Schill as state chair. It's now very possible that Schill will form his own faction in the Hamurg Bürgerschaft, take a couple of supporters with him, and force new elections. Stay tuned.

Christmas Stocking

2003-12-06T19:12:51+00:00

Grandma sent Christopher a Christmas stocking. Since he's not familiar with American Christmas customs, he thought he had to wear it.

We'll set it out for the Nikolaus tonight. He's coming to our house a day late this year, and he's been informed to expect a stocking instead of a shoe. (The exact date doesn't matter, since Christopher is already a few days ahead with his Advent calendar.)

I nearly forgot my fourth weblog anniversary

2003-12-05T20:12:41+00:00

I nearly forgot my fourth weblog anniversary

NY Council Introduces 'Potty Parity' Bill

2003-12-04T17:12:57+00:00

NY Council Introduces 'Potty Parity' Bill

Is it already Christmas?

2003-12-04T05:12:49+00:00

It's big, loud and clunky, but it's here. And it arrived on time. And it works.

Jeans and mobile phone instead of overalls

2003-12-03T05:12:26+00:00

Jeans and mobile phone instead of overalls

Calvin, please come home!

2003-12-02T07:12:34+00:00

Calvin, please come home!

German Blogawards 2003

2003-12-01T17:12:45+00:00

German Blogawards 2003

Perl Advent Calendar

2003-12-01T17:12:16+00:00

Perl Advent Calendar

Mystery of the Registered Letter solved

2003-12-01T14:12:54+00:00

Mystery of the Registered Letter solved

Washing Dishes

2003-12-01T05:12:20+00:00

Santa's elves give extra points for helping Oma.

24/7 phone support at blogg.de

2003-11-30T12:11:05+00:00

24/7 phone support at blogg.de

EU Bans Blogging?

2003-11-30T08:11:26+00:00

EU bans blogging? Martin Röll thinks that this ruling from the European Court of Justice upholding a ruling in Swedien may be the start:

Mrs Lindqvist was involved in preparing people for Communion in the parish of Alseda (Sweden). At the end of 1998 she set up internet pages on her personal computer at home to enable parishioners preparing for Confirmation to obtain easily the information they were likely to need. Those pages contained information on Mrs Lindqvist and
18 of her colleagues in the parish, including their first names and sometimes their full names. Mrs Lindqvist also described the work done by her colleagues and their hobbies in mildly humorous terms. In several cases their family circumstances, their telephone number and other information were given. She also mentioned that one of her colleagues had injured her foot and was working part-time on medical grounds. Mrs Lindqvist was fined SEK 4 000 (approximately EUR 450) for processing personal data by automatic means without notifying the Datainspektion (Swedish supervisory authority for the protection of electronically transmitted data) in writing, for transferring data to third countries without authorisation and for processing sensitive personal data.

So we don't blog, we 'process personal data by automatic means'. And so we need to register our blogs with the proper authorities, and get permission every time we refer to someone by name (or address or URL)? Or not?

Registered Mail

2003-11-29T20:11:40+00:00

The post left a notice that there is a registered letter requiring my signature waiting for me. I can pick it up Monday after 10 am at the stationers, our local post agent.

I wasn't expecting any such letter, and I have no idea what it could be. It might be for MamaMaus, although the form has clealy 'Frau' and 'Firma' crossed-out, so that the letter is for 'Herrn Hanson-Petersen' (which isn't me, there's no Petersen in my name, but that's beside the poinrt). The last registered letter we received was for her, a speeding ticket (with fine and points). The US consulate sent my passport via registered mail. A pink slip from my employer might be registered, but the deadline for layoffs has passed for this quarter. Financial documents might also be sent registered.

Now I am expecting a package to arrive COD, and that would involve the same form being left in our mailbox, except that the 'COD' box would be ticked instead of that for 'Registered Mail'. I assume the post knows how to fill out their own forms. So I have no idea what to expect. It's probably not good news. It's either bad or indifferent. I'll let you know, unless the whole thing is too personal or embarassing. Then I won't.

Sweets and flowers

2003-11-29T06:11:45+00:00

Sweets and flowers

Script for a new Jagermeister commercial?

2003-11-27T20:11:54+00:00

Script for a new Jagermeister commercial?

Mama Pirate

2003-11-27T18:11:09+00:00

So this is what MamaMaus was doing in Malta a couple of weeks ago. Planning hostile takeovers, eh?

Closed on Thanksgiving

2003-11-27T05:11:51+00:00

Arlo Guthrie: "We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

"Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, 'Closed on Thanksgiving.' And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

"We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our's down.

"That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, 'Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it.' And I said, 'Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage.'...

"'Kid, whad'ya get?' I said, 'I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.'" continued

Hoder for Parliament

2003-11-26T19:11:10+00:00

Hoder for Parliament

Comparing Wal-Mart and the Internet

2003-11-26T17:11:25+00:00

Comparing Wal-Mart and the Internet

Republican Hackers

2003-11-26T06:11:25+00:00

Isn't the blogosphere wonderful? Doc Searls is looking for Republican hackers for a Linux Journal article, and Josh Marshall found one working for Orrin Hatch. I'm lovin' it!

Why run Windows on an ATM?

2003-11-26T06:11:15+00:00

Why run Windows on an ATM?

Ideological purity does not motivate Bush...

2003-11-25T22:11:34+00:00

Ideological purity does not motivate Bush...

debian.org compromise - Developer Cleanup Info

2003-11-25T22:11:23+00:00

debian.org compromise - Developer Cleanup Info

She's got the flu...

2003-11-24T20:11:20+00:00

She's got the flu...

perl.com: Perl Slurp-Eaze

2003-11-24T19:11:29+00:00

perl.com: Perl Slurp-Eaze

One Big German Bank?

2003-11-24T17:11:12+00:00

One Big German Bank?

(Not) Changing Religions

2003-11-23T20:11:58+00:00

I've known for a couple months that I would be buying a new notebook at the end of November. My Thinkpad (with SuSE 9.0) is somewhat long in tooth (at 400 MHz and 800x600), and the non-functional battery makes wireless a cruel joke. And like everyone else, I'm finding I spend a lot more time on my notebook, even at home, than at my desktop. I'll be buying it myself, so price is a major issue. 1200 Euros is my target, 1500 the absolute maximum I can pay.

I wanted to choose an iBook, I really did. The new 12" G4 is 1199 Euros, right on target. It has Unix pre-installed. It has geek credibility. And it looks cool. But 1199 Euros is not the end. I'd have to add an Airport card, since it can't take my old PCMCIA wireless card. And 256 MB RAM is a bit weak, would need to be upgraded. And I'd have to buy software, Net News Wire and BBEdit just for starters. And I would have to learn a new operating system, with its own quirks and bugs, and be beholden to Apple, a company I neither like nor trust. Changing your operating system is like changing your religion. It's not a decision to be taken lightly... after all, your soul is at stake!

Of course, Windows is out of the question... the first thing I'd do with a Windows notebook is format the hard disk. So I was intrigued to see that the Asus L3D series can be configured without any operating system, for about 1150 Euros. SuSE 9.0 seems to run just fine with it (which I can't say for sure for a Centrino). With a mobile Athlon 2500+ and 512 MB, it's powerful and cool enough. It's big and heavy, but it won't be leaving the house much. And I'll be able to leverage the software and knowledge I already have.

I've given myself 24 hours to change my mind, in case any evangelists want me to convert to Apple or Dell or whatever.

Update Welcome to everyone coming over from MacSurfer, and thanks for adding your comments (even if they are somewhat one-sided :-).

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

2003-11-23T20:11:33+00:00

via ITW: The Icelandic Phallological Museum

Kino

2003-11-23T15:11:25+00:00

Today we saw Finding Nemo (which just opened in Germany) at our local theater. It lived up to our high expectations.

And yes, that's a bandage on Christopher's cheek. He had a high-speed encounter with a table corner.

Donkeys and Guerillas

2003-11-22T03:11:32+00:00

Donkeys and Guerillas

Plastic Pallet

2003-11-20T20:11:12+00:00

On the autobahn this morning, a plastic pallet fell from a truck onto the road. Hardly a notable event, except that it occurred directly in front of me. I was unable to avoid the obstacle, and thus drove over it. My right front tire did not survive the encounter, and neither did the wheel. Just to make things interesting, my spare was flat as well.

All's well that ends well. The auto club pumped up the spare, I limped into my local ATU, left them my car and took the bus to work. I now have 4 spanking new tires. And dirty fingernails. And am short 2 hours on my time sheet at work.

Neo-Nazi Comment Spam

2003-11-19T05:11:38+00:00

An interesting twist on comment spam. My latest post on Martin Hohmann attracted a generic comment linking to a neo-Nazi news site. I've removed the links, and closed discussion on that post, but I've left the comment and the URLs for the sake of discussion. The comment is vaguely on-topic (as the post is on anti-semitism), and even neo-Nazis have the right to free speech. But on my blog?

Update Actually, since PapaScott is hosted with a German domain on a German host, and is therefore subject to German law, neo-Nazis do not have a right to free speech on my blog.

Fear of Cows

2003-11-17T22:11:52+00:00

Up til now, my WiFi setup has been pretty simple... no access point, just ad-hoc mode with an Elsa 11 MBit card in my notebook and a matching card in my floppy ISDN router. No authentication, no encryption... the cows in the pasture out back could steal all the bandwidth they waned. But I was never able to MamaMaus' notebook to connect. And she kept taking my notebook to check her Ebay auctions. There may also be a new notebook in my future, so it was time to upgrade to a real access point.

I got the Linksys WRT54G, because it was cheap and supports 54 MBit (which is in Mama's new Centrino notebook). It's designed for DSL, but works fine with ISDN. So Mama can now surf from the couch, I can work on my ThinkPad , and WEP is enabled so the cows can't snoop our packets anymore.

One thing it lacks is static DHCP tables... if DHCP is enabled, there's no way to assigned a fixed IP address to a certain MAC address, which makes it impossible to maintain an internal domain. So now I'm letting the floppy router do DHCP, like it did before. The Linksys is no longer in gateway mode, so it's not really a router anymore, just a switch with ears.

Roadster Update

2003-11-16T13:11:51+00:00

In defence of the Roadster incident, MamaMaus offers this picture (taken for insurance purposes) of the gas pump in question, which at the bottom carries a V-Power sticker on the diesel side of the pump. Therefore, at first glance, it is not totally stupid to believe that V-Power is some sort of souped-up diesel.

It will be interesting to see who ends paying for the damage. Unless, of course, it comes out of our pocket, in which case it would be not interesting, but tragic.

Aldi USA in Minnesota

2003-11-16T10:11:59+00:00

Aldi USA in Minnesota

Bath Grin

2003-11-15T18:11:37+00:00

Christopher has his pelican in the tub and is planning his next trip to Florida in the spring.

BackupPC

2003-11-14T06:11:26+00:00

The past couple of weeks I've been evaluating BackupPC, an open source backup to hard disk program. It uses standard client programs like rsync and tar or can read Windows smb shares, so there is nothing to install on the clients. It has a nice web interface (mod perl) for administering full and incremental backups and for retrieving restored files (either save to client or retrieve as tar or zip archive via http), Best of all, it has a intelligent pool system so that identical files from various clients are stored only once. So if you have several dozen identical workstations, your disk space requirement for the backup is the size of a single workstation, or less if you turn on compression.

We want to use it for something different, which is why it's taken me so long to get it going. We want to take nightly backups of our development servers, specifically the working directories of our developers with their CVS playgrounds. The servers are under load literally both day (development) and night (daily builds). A typical partition is 20 GB with 1.5 million files, with lots of duplicates . Our tape drives are maxxed out, so we'd like to put the daily backups on disk and archive to tape just once a week.

My problem was not setting up BackupPC itself, but setting up the clients. My test machines all had good performance, but under real conditions rsync was simply too slow, taking 20 hours for a full and 12 hours for an incremental, putting load on both server and client. The testing process was somewhat tedious, since I had to wait overnight each time for results. But I've finally found settings that work... using tar over ssh (rsh is not an option) reniced in a wrapper script on the backup client to -19. The full backups still take 20 hours (that's OK, we'll do full backups on weekends), but the incrementals are done in 3 hours. Bingo. Now we can get everything done overnight.

We'll try things our for a few more days, but it looks like we'll be able to put this system into production.

Roadster

2003-11-13T20:11:38+00:00

Some days it is just better to stay in bed. Today MamaMaus was under stress at work, more than usual. But she's paid well to handle stress, and one of her perks is the new BMW 500 class TurboDiesel she drives to the office. Today she was running both late and low on fuel, so she pulled into Shell, drove up to the diesel pump, and filled up with V-Power.

Shell V-Power is not diesel. It's 100 octane SuperPlus gasoline.

A few minutes later, her onboard computer reported 'Motor Damage', and this time it was not an error. The repair will cost 4000 Euros and will take at least a week. During that time she'll be driving a loaner Smart Roadster, which is easily a half-size smaller than my Twingo. And worst of all, her boss tomorrow is going to have a huge laugh at her expense.

McDonald's ist online mit SUSE LINUX

2003-11-13T12:11:50+00:00

McDonald's ist online mit SUSE LINUX

T-Online in talks to buy AOL

2003-11-13T09:11:38+00:00

T-Online in talks to buy AOL

Security snake oil

2003-11-13T09:11:08+00:00

Security snake oil

No Room For Children

2003-11-12T19:11:49+00:00

Two stories in the local paper illustrating how unimportant children are in Germany. Family Sentenced to Idleness. Court rejects family's application for full-day child care... as self-employed they do not meet the criterea, they can stay home and 'live from unemployment'. Too many teachers sick, kids, stay home! Elementary school closes because 5 of 15 teachers are sick, substitutes unavailable for 4 weeks.

Progress

2003-11-11T19:11:27+00:00

Last Easter, just after we returned from our Florida trip, I over 106 kg. I started an Atkins diet, and in 4 weeks I was down to 99 kg. But after 6 weeks I started getting bored with it, and got off the wagon in early June.

Then 3-1/2 weeks ago I stepped on the scale and I was back up to 101.6 kg. I decided to start Atkins again. This morning I was at 96.9 kg, so altogether in 2 stretches I've lost nearly 10 kg, or over 20 lbs.

I'm documenting this success for myself, in case I should get bored with it again. I'd like to get down to 85 kg if I can.

Job Security

2003-11-11T19:11:26+00:00

At work we have typical German work contracts which can be terminated with 6 weeks notice before the end of a quarter. The next termination date is next Wednesday, and there are rumors that there will be layoffs announced for the end of the year, despite our having worked short time for the past 6 months. One of sysadmins decided not to wait and found something new. That makes the jobs for the rest of us sysadmins more secure (assuming we stay in business), but it also means we all have more work. And more bullet points for the CV.

Among other things, I'll now be responsible for all our Linux installations, about 60 workstations and a dozen servers. I'll be the resident Linux expert, except that I don't feel like an expert at all. Sure, I've been using Linux for nearly 10 years, but I haven't been keeping up with the latest developments, and lately I've been happy to run a stock commerical distribution (Mandrake at work, SuSE at home). So I have some learning to do. At least it beats learning Windows.

Hohmann Go Home

2003-11-11T04:11:17+00:00

When I first posted about the anti-semitic remarks by CDU Bundestag member Martin Hohmann, I thought it would be a back page story that would be forgotten the next day. I even tried to push the story to other blogs to make sure it would not go unnoticed. How wrong I was. Pressure has built on the CDU leadership to go beyond censuring Homann, especially after Defence Minister Struck fired the general in charge of Germany's special forces (KSK) for supporting Hohmann.

The CDU leadership has now buckled, and has started the process of expelling Hohmann from the Bundestag faction and the party. Late, Frau Merkel, but not too late. You can take your ear off the ground now.

McDonald's anger over McJob dictionary entry

2003-11-10T15:11:01+00:00

McDonald's anger over McJob dictionary entry

Nazi gas firm IG Farben to file for insolvency

2003-11-10T13:11:28+00:00

Nazi gas firm IG Farben to file for insolvency

Sophie Scholl

2003-11-10T13:11:27+00:00

Sophie Scholl

Castor is on it's way again

2003-11-09T20:11:26+00:00

Castor is on it's way again

ctrl-alt-del

2003-11-09T20:11:06+00:00

Just so you know, on the new BMW 500 series the on-board computer monitors the tire pressure for you. But if you ever change the tires (for example, for winter), you have to re-initialize the system. Otherwise the computer will warn you of a flat tire when you have none. That can be very disquieting when doing 200 on the Autobahn. Just so you know.

SecurityFocus RSS Feeds

2003-11-09T15:11:31+00:00

SecurityFocus RSS Feeds

Virtual Synagouges

2003-11-09T12:11:22+00:00

Today is the 65th anniversary of the Kristallnacht, the 'night of broken glass' when Nazi mobs destroyed 101 synagouges and thousands of Jewish businesses. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in1989 (also on this date) and the surge of Jewish immigrants from Russia, many synagouges are being rebuilt. Today the cornerstone was laid for a new Jewish center in Munich.

vowe and itw both point to the Synagogues in Germany project, in which synagouges are being vitually reconstructed by architecture students and made viewable online.

6 girls and a case of beer at ebay.de

2003-11-08T09:11:41+00:00

6 girls and a case of beer at ebay.de

The Greatest Germans?

2003-11-07T22:11:43+00:00

The evening news on ZDF was pre-empted for 'Unsere Besten', the poll of the 100 Greatest Germans based on a similar program on BBC. Even though the names were not limited to the 20th century, there was still a huge hole from the Nazi period. For those who are interested how Germans view their own history, the top 10 in alphabetical order are

Konrad Adenauer
Johann S. Bach
Otto v. Bismarck
Willi Brandt
Albert Einstein
Johann W. Goethe
Johannes Gutenberg
Martin Luther
Karl Marx
Hans & Sophie Scholl

All seem worthy, but I'd personally vote for the Scholls, founders of the White Rose resistance during the Third Reich.

Damage Report

2003-11-07T20:11:16+00:00

This is what Chrisopher and Janik did to a McDonald's indoor playland yesterday. Not bad for a cellphone picture.

Did this really happen in my country?

2003-11-07T20:11:11+00:00

Did this really happen in my country?

Our IT guy knows his shit.... and he didn't download the porn

2003-11-07T19:11:57+00:00

Our IT guy knows his shit.... and he didn't download the porn

Monsters

2003-11-06T15:11:17+00:00

Since it's sunny this afternoon, I can send the monsters outside. Harmless looking creatures, aren't they? Don't let that fool you.

Monster Double Feature

2003-11-06T09:11:37+00:00

Our Tagesmutter is out of town for a conference, and MamaMaus is covorting on Malta, so I'm home alone with Christopher. Actually, I'm splitting the time so that today I have Christopher and his best friend Janik, while tomorrow they are both at Janik's house. Janik just started first grade, so we pick him up at school at 11:30 (yes, that's the wonderful German half-day school system). Wish me luck on surviving the afternoon!

Needless to say, attending the Blogger Treff in Hamburg this evening is out of the question.

brentashley: The Clinton Javascript Bug

2003-11-05T04:11:04+00:00

brentashley: The Clinton Javascript Bug

Novell Acquires SUSE LINUX

2003-11-04T15:11:27+00:00

Novell Acquires SUSE LINUX

PHP 4.3.4 Released

2003-11-04T05:11:24+00:00

PHP 4.3.4 Released

Should I be worried?

2003-11-03T07:11:32+00:00

My wife will be attending a costume party on a Mediterranean island this week, put on by her employer. Should I be worried?

At least her party has a pirate theme instead of ancient Rome.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2003-11-01T05:11:50+00:00

The German journalist and blogger WorldWideKlein on leaving Washington after 7 years (translation mine):

"The USA to which I came in July 1996 was a completely different country than the USA that I am now leaving: well-off, self-satisfied, open, optimistic. It was the land of Bill Clinton and the Internet, sudden wealth, free of worries. Today on the other hand, my adopted countrymen find themselves being driven from one fear to the next (and many of them let themselves be driven), threatend, despised, isolated. Who is responsible for this change - everyone has his own their theory, I'm sure. I've been so close to the action that right now I don't have an overview, I'm missing the big picture. But I already noticed in 1996/1997 how helpful it sometimes is to leave a country and to observe it from the outside."

Welcome home, and keep on blogging!

Not-so-latent Antisemitism

2003-10-31T04:10:48+00:00

The ARD evening news Tagesschau <a title="tagesschau.de : CDU-Abgeordneter nennt Juden "Tätervolk"" href="http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID2535334_REF1,00.html">reported last night on the CDU Bundestag back-bencher Martin Hohmann, who on October 3rd gave a speech to his local party comparing the violence of the Russian Revolution to the Halocaust, saying that Jews could be called 'a criminal people' (Tätervolk) for the crimes of the Bolscheviks, citing Henry Ford's 'The International Jew' and calling for 'justice for Germans'. The speech would have gone unnoticed had it not appeared on the local party website (content now removed). The national CDU leadership has distanced itself from Hohmann and his remarks

This is not Hohmann's first time in the national spotlight. A year ago he was mentioned in a report on radical-rightists in the CDU. While it is good that such opinions are brought (somewhat belatedly) to light by the national media, it would be better if they would call the same bullshit on the left as well.

Update Cum Grano Salis and Shark Blog comment as well. Update 2 BBC story

It's not the media that's biased, it's the audience

2003-10-30T20:10:38+00:00

It's not the media that's biased, it's the audience

Hackers on Atkins

2003-10-30T16:10:41+00:00

Hackers on Atkins

Bavaria now located in Belarus

2003-10-30T09:10:55+00:00

Bavaria now located in Belarus

BlogSlump

2003-10-30T05:10:31+00:00

Others may blog about not wanting to blog... I just do it, with the exception of some Christopher pictures and a few quick links. Father, forgive me, it has been over two weeks since my last real post.
Maybe it's because I'm irritable, due to carbohydrate withdrawl. Losing weight is easy, I've done it dozens of times. This time I really mean it. Really, I do.
I probably won't make the Blogger-Treff in Hamburg next week, since Mama is in Malta all week, and we have no day care Thursday and Friday.
I want the new G4 iBook.

BBC: Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith ousted

2003-10-29T19:10:59+00:00

BBC: Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith ousted

'Compare (Firebird) to IE where you'll have to wait until 2006, to find out if they've fixed your bug.'

2003-10-29T16:10:01+00:00

Compare that to IE where you'll have to wait until 2006

FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE Announcement

2003-10-29T09:10:10+00:00

FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE Announcement

Linux ships with every security feature wide open...

2003-10-27T18:10:58+00:00

Linux ships with every security feature wide open...

3. Hamburger Blogger-Treffen

2003-10-27T16:10:08+00:00

3. Hamburger Blogger-Treffen

How Microsoft's Misunderstanding of Open Source Hurts Us All

2003-10-27T13:10:32+00:00

How Microsoft's Misunderstanding of Open Source Hurts Us All

2003-10-27T05:10:14+00:00

Programmierer aller Länder vereinigt Euch!

Office Furniture

2003-10-26T18:10:21+00:00

Mama is selling her office furniture... or at least the cold, sterile leather set that she inherited from her predecessor and is somewhat inpractical for holding meetings. So, on ebay it goes, couch, 4 chairs, and a glass table, all to the highest bidder. Wouldn't they look great in your office? The leather couch also makes a wonderful changing table, as we know from experience. And since the set must be picked up at her office in Hamburg, you'll have the chance to meet Mrs. PapaScott up close and personal. Bidding ends in 8 days, put in your bid today!

Michael Moore is bigger in Germany than he is in the US

2003-10-26T15:10:15+00:00

Michael Moore is bigger in Germany than he is in the US

Fish win!

2003-10-26T06:10:27+00:00

Fish win!

Christopher's New Bed

2003-10-25T18:10:36+00:00

One of our goals as parents is to give our son opportunities we never had as kids, for example, as of today, being able to sleep in a bunk bed. With a slide. And a tower.

Hal-LUUUUUUUE

2003-10-24T17:10:53+00:00

2003-10-24T04:10:55+00:00

Martin Röll: Sprachbarrieren überwinden

Ton Zijlstra: Language barriers

2003-10-24T04:10:02+00:00

Ton Zijlstra: Language barriers

What 20% of Germans believe about Bush and 9/11

2003-10-23T18:10:56+00:00

What 20% of Germans believe about Bush and 9/11

Germany is Avoiding the Madrid Donor Conference

2003-10-23T18:10:53+00:00

Germany is Avoiding the Madrid Donor Conference

The new iBook G4 is very tempting....

2003-10-23T07:10:56+00:00

The new iBook G4 is very tempting....

Golden October

2003-10-22T20:10:49+00:00

Last Sunday was a gorgeous sunny day, and we took a little walk
around the neighborhood. Christopher jumped on a lot of trees.

K3b: better than advertised

2003-10-22T18:10:40+00:00

K3b (KDE CD burning program): better than advertised

bordbuch: Germany's Economy Picking Up

2003-10-22T02:10:59+00:00

bordbuch: Germany's Economy Picking Up

Ian turns two

2003-10-21T18:10:51+00:00

Ian turns two... happy birthday!

The pull of the Mac

2003-10-21T07:10:05+00:00

The pull of the Mac

Nameless

2003-10-19T20:10:57+00:00

The DNS at my domain provider has gone down, so you may have trouble reading this blog for a while. In fact, if you are reading this post, either the problem has gone away, or your browser hasn't noticed it yet. My IP is 213.73.82.31, but I don't expect anyone to remember that. The whole point of DNS is that we don't have to memorize IPs. Except, of course, when DNS is broken. Like now.

Update The problem lasted only a couple of hours. Things are better now.

Russell has moved from Spain to California

2003-10-19T16:10:43+00:00

Russell has moved from Spain to California

Red Sox Haiku

2003-10-19T16:10:18+00:00

Red Sox Haiku

The British obessesion with Hitler...

2003-10-18T18:10:05+00:00

The British obessesion with Hitler...

ISTP

2003-10-17T18:10:17+00:00

Introverted (I) 70% Extroverted (E) 30%
Sensing (S) 64.71% Intuitive (N) 35.29%
Thinking (T) 60% Feeling (F) 40%
Perceiving (P) 66.67% Judging (J) 33.33%

ISTP - "Artisan". Impulsive action. Life should be of impulse rather than of purpose. Action is an end to itself. Fearless, craves excitement, master of tools. 5.4% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test</div>

Seen at Blogeline's Journal.

American etiquette is an oxymoron

2003-10-17T04:10:01+00:00

American etiquette is an oxymoron

The world as we know it will not end

2003-10-16T04:10:08+00:00

The world as we know it will *not* end

Dnjepropetrovsk

2003-10-15T20:10:17+00:00

Dnjepropetrovsk

Amango

2003-10-15T19:10:48+00:00

After reading at generation neXt that Amango (a German DVD-rental-by-mail service a lá Netflix) has an entry level offer for 9,90 Euro per month (for 1 DVD at a time), I decided to check them out. They're located in Hamburg, so we should get quick turnover. I'm spoiled by the German post, though... I was disappointed that the first DVD arrived after two days instead of overnight. But if the service is decent, I'm sure we'll upgrade to the standard package (3 DVDs at a time for 19,90 Euros).

The other German Netflix clone Netleih also has a 9,90 Euro deal (4 DVDs per month, 2 at a time).

PHP: Multi-Byte String Functions

2003-10-15T03:10:54+00:00

PHP: Multi-Byte String Functions

Windmill Front

2003-10-15T03:10:04+00:00

What' up on the anti-windmill front? Our informal group organized last week. We named ourselves "Lüllauer Gegenwind", selected our neighbor as speaker, and my wife as treasurer. The group printed up flyers to inform the village of the informational meeting held by the windmill investors. They expected 20 people, but 120 showed up (our village has a population of 400), and the meeting was written up in the Hamburger Abendblatt. We've been getting some help from a similar group in Dahlenburg, 'Windkraft mit Vernunft'.

The group will be meeting with farmers this week to try to convince them that wind energy is not the secure source of income that the wind investment firms make it out to be. We'll be following the situation at the city level (where the zoning situation is somewhat muddled) and the state level (where a bill proposed by the new CDU/FDP government will increase the required distance between windmills and residential areas). We're unsure whether our village is 'residential' or 'mixed used'.

I'll probably let my wife do most of the windmill campaigning, since Christopher is too young to be left alone evenings. I've offered to set up a weblog for the group, but they haven't taken me up on it yet.

Jobs at Six Apart

2003-10-15T02:10:29+00:00

Jobs at Six Apart

Smarty

2003-10-14T17:10:58+00:00

Learning a templating system for PHP has long been something I knew I *should* do, but had been long put off because I knew it would be uncomfortable, like cleaning my desk or going to the dentist. No matter which system I would chose, there would be some overhead in learning and in rearranging my work.

Finally, inspired last week the implementation of templates at blogg.de, I jumped into the Smarty template engine. And as I implemented my first template, I promptly made my first newbie mistake, namely confusing 'caching' with 'pre-compiling'. I set my language-specific entry page to be cached, and wondered why my site was suddenly only in German. After a slight bout of panic, I checked the docs and found I could set separate caches for German and English.

I knew this would be as much fun as having my teeth cleaned. But unlike going to the dentist, hopefully I only have to learn Smarty once, and can then use it for all my little PHP projects.

Klingon is not in Unicode

2003-10-14T16:10:44+00:00

Klingon is not in Unicode

Spiegel Online: Whale found in Hamburg Harbor

2003-10-14T14:10:58+00:00

Spiegel Online: Whale found in Hamburg Harbor

Turck MMCache for PHP

2003-10-14T12:10:59+00:00

Turck MMCache for PHP

2003-10-13T16:10:02+00:00

Lüllau: Sturm gegen neue Windräder

Deutschland Weltmeister

2003-10-13T04:10:11+00:00

After defeating the heavily favored US in the semi-finals, Germany won the Women's World Cup yesterday, defeating Sweden 2-1 in extra time in a very good and close match (broadcast on ARD in prime time Sunday evening).

Photo stolen from vowe, to whom I say, I can name three players: Prinz, Meinert, Wiegmann.

'Impressum' in English revisited

2003-10-12T14:10:44+00:00

'Impressum' in English revisited

EURO 2004 Qualifying: Germany wreck Iceland dream

2003-10-11T19:10:07+00:00

EURO 2004 Qualifying: Germany wreck Iceland dream

Joel on Character Sets

2003-10-11T05:10:20+00:00

Joel on Character Sets

CDU has problem with health

2003-10-10T18:10:15+00:00

CDU has problem with health

US Investor buys 20% of Axel Springer Verlag, publisher of Bild

2003-10-10T01:10:48+00:00

US Investor buys 20% of Axel Springer Verlag, publisher of Bild

Is that Ellen Feiss advertising for T-Online?

2003-10-09T14:10:13+00:00

Is that Ellen Feiss advertising for T-Online?

$129 for a lousy system upgrade?

2003-10-09T09:10:40+00:00

$129 for a lousy system upgrade?

Silvio, not Arnie

2003-10-09T05:10:14+00:00

Adam Curry: "I'm jealous of the vigor and dedication that goes into blogging political and social issues in the states. Believe me that there is no country in Europe as adamant about certain inalienable rights, like free speech. When it comes to that Dave [Winer] is right, blogging truly is an 'american thing'....

"We're on the eve of the birth of a constitution for a new union of states (Europe), comprised of 400 million people with a single currency. Surely that is worth blogging about. Unfortunately the blogosphere in my neck of the woods hasn't quite moved beyond the stage of commenting on traditional media. In turn, Big Media here is still reporting that weblogs are only used by teenage girls who write about their pets. Sound familiar?

"I feel as if it's my duty as an american to blog the creation of the european constitution, get people interested in the process and (hopefully) the outcome. There's ample opportunity to shape the ground rules and laws that the citizens will abide to."

The European blogs I read seem to blog more about US politics than their own politics. We should be talking about Berlusconi, not Schwarzenegger.

Arnold-Schwarzenegger-Stadion

2003-10-08T08:10:07+00:00

Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium in Graz, Austria

Step on the future

2003-10-08T06:10:23+00:00

Step on the future

Hamburg bar offers 'kindergarten' for men

2003-10-08T06:10:03+00:00

Hamburg bar offers 'kindergarten' for men

Rabbi, what if the Red Sox face the Cubs in the World Series?

2003-10-07T19:10:28+00:00

Rabbi, what if the Red Sox face the Cubs in the World Series?

George W. Bush waffles on RSS question

2003-10-07T14:10:09+00:00

George W. Bush waffles on RSS question

Extreme Monday Syndrome

2003-10-06T16:10:49+00:00

The rest of the day has been cancelled due to EMS (Extreme Monday Syndrome), with weather to match. We hope that things will return to normal tomorrow, although the weather is not expected to change.

Blogging for Community Action Groups

2003-10-06T03:10:22+00:00

My windmill post has gotten some attention as it contains some good comments pro and con on wind energy in general. I should have expected that, since readers would certainly care more about the general issue than about my backyard (or even the property value of my backyard).

I'm actually finding the organizational effort more interesting than the issue itself. This evening about 30 of us will be meeting and will probably formally form a community action group. I'm wondering, wouldn't a weblog be the perfect tool for such a fledgling group? I'll try to explain the concept to my neighbors the best I can. Do any of you know of basic user documention (as opposed to setup/admin documentation) for Movable Type in German?

IFA Women's World Cup: USA - Germany 0:3

2003-10-06T03:10:11+00:00

FIFA Women's World Cup: USA - Germany 0:3

AL Playoffs: Yankees 8 Twins 1

2003-10-06T01:10:12+00:00

AL Playoffs: Yankees 8 Twins 1

Animal Park Overload

2003-10-05T18:10:40+00:00

With his Grandma here for two and a half weeks, Christopher has now visited 3 animal parks in the past 10 days <insert obligatory photo of Christopher feeding elephants here>. I think he is starting to suffer from animal park overload. He now has a dozen toy animals set up throughout the living room and kitchen for his jungle safari jeep tour, complete with special effects and very loud narration. And it is way past his bedtime.

AL Playoffs: Yankees 3 Twins 1

2003-10-04T20:10:16+00:00

AL Playoffs: Yankees 3 Twins 1

It's your fault

2003-10-04T06:10:08+00:00

Now opinion polls are just polls and not elections, and elections are 3 years away, but the poll ratings for Chancellor Schröder and the SPD continue to hit new lows. The latest numbers last night on ARD were quite dramatic, reflecting the internal problems Schröder has been having with his left wing and the crest of popularity for Edmund Stoiber and the Union after the Bavarian election. The lowlights for Schröder:

in the 'Sunday question', the Union would get 50%, the SPD 27% (Greens 11%, FDP 5%, PDS 3%)
for the first time, Schröder would lose a head to head match, against both Merkel and Stoiber

Message to Schröder: 'we don't like what you're doing, and it's your fault'. A few weks ago, I didn't believe the ruling coalition was in any serious mid-term danger. Now I do.

Sid Vicious Action Figure

2003-10-03T18:10:51+00:00

Sid Vicious Action Figure

AL Playoffs: Yankees 4 Twins 1

2003-10-03T07:10:48+00:00

AL Playoffs: Yankees 4 Twins 1

Hamburger Oktoberfest

2003-10-03T07:10:28+00:00

Hamburger Oktoberfest

Best Practices for Time Travelers

2003-10-01T18:10:03+00:00

Best Practices for Time Travelers

Christopher Uncut

2003-10-01T08:10:29+00:00

Now that we have a working camera again, we've been reminded by various grandparents that it is our parental duty to upload masses of Christopher photos to the Internet. I've set up a test album at TypePad, and now you can see Christopher attempting to rebuild a historical Roman wall in downtown Cologne. Note that the images are repetitive and might be boring to non-family members.

AL Playoffs: Twins 3 Yankees 1

2003-09-30T20:09:21+00:00

AL Playoffs: Twins 3 Yankees 1

We're Back

2003-09-30T19:09:43+00:00

We're back from Cologne. Christopher loved Phantasialand. We told him that we would be staying at the Dragon City (which he knows from Jim Knopf), since the hotel had a Chinese theme, and he was able to find plenty of dragons. At the park itself, he had to ride the monorail 4 times to see the (machanized) mammoth and dinosaurs.

On the way back, we stopped at the cathedral in Cologne just to see some architecture that's not part of a theme park. And we did not stop at the chocolate museum. Maybe next time.

Business Meeting

2003-09-28T09:09:32+00:00

Mama has a business event tomorrow at the Phantasialand amusement park near Cologne, and we (Grandma, Christopher and I) all get to come along. We're driving down today and we'll stay at the hotel on the grounds. We'll hit Cologne (the Dom and the Rhine) tomorrow morning, do the park in the afternoon, and come back on Tuesday.

Farm subsidies

2003-09-28T06:09:01+00:00

Farm subsidies

2003-09-27T08:09:47+00:00

This is the view from our bedroom window, with an artist's conception of a wind generator that has been proposed for our village.

How fast can you say "Bürgerinitiative"?

Is Microsoft Evil?

2003-09-26T05:09:20+00:00

Scoble made an innocent* post on 'Is Microsoft Evil'. But I kind of got off on a tangent in his comments. I meant to say that Microsoft is no more or less 'evil' than any other large company, and that choosing software because you think one company is morally superior to another is rather silly. But at least my first comment didn't come out as I wanted.

*Since Scoble works for Microsoft, is anything he posts innocent?

OPML2HTML - Blogroll bauen mit SharpReader und XSLT

2003-09-25T06:09:05+00:00

OPML2HTML - Blogroll bauen mit SharpReader und XSLT

DDR Show

2003-09-25T03:09:32+00:00

We accidentally tuned in to the DDR Show (with a mostly silent Kati Witt and, um, some blond guy) last night (ZDF was running soccer, so Heute Journal was running late). Now I can answer the question of whether 'Ostalgie' shows trivialize the brutal dictatorship of the DDR with an unqualified 'yes'.

They did have ex-FM Genscher together with a couple who were among the several thousand who had camped out at the West German embassy in Prague back in 1989 and were allowed to emigrate. The couple thanked Genscher for his actions back then. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

German Court Accepts Teacher's Head Scarf

2003-09-25T02:09:28+00:00

German Court Accepts Teacher's Head Scarf

Christopher and Grandma

2003-09-24T19:09:29+00:00

They're both ready for bed. Or at least she is.

First Post

2003-09-24T16:09:16+00:00

Note Christopher's toys on the floor, and the box for Papa's new toy on the table in the background.

Update Disclaimer: Mama insists I point out that the Lacoste shirt is a hand-me-down from her nephew, and nothing that we would ever have bought ourselves. And Christopher sends special greetings to his Grandpa in Minnesota. Don't forget the honey medicine!

What Works?

2003-09-24T03:09:33+00:00

I got this mail from work after I left yesterday, regarding a PC I care for: "I put dathon on your desk. CPU and graphic card were defective, and as I tried to boot it, there were also disk errors! Maybe you can still save something... we do have spare disks."

Does anything in the machine still work? Anything? Looks like it will be a fun morning...

Twins win 10th in a row

2003-09-24T02:09:54+00:00

Twins win 10th in a row, clinch AL Central!

Sleeping With Grandma

2003-09-23T19:09:29+00:00

Christopher's Grandma has been here since Friday, and the two are inseparable. He even insists on sleeping in her bed. She doesn't seem to mind As for language, Christopher understands Grandma's English perfectly, but Grandma has some trouble with Christopher's German, but he manages to make himself understood.

No pictures for now. Our nearly 4-year-old Nikon Coolpix suffered (yet another) 1 meter fall to the floor a couple of weeks ago. It's not designed for the kind of stress, and it's not worth the price of repair. A replacement is on its way.

Euroanglo Culture

2003-09-22T06:09:44+00:00

Euroanglo Culture

Devastating Defeat of Schroeder's SPD

2003-09-22T05:09:45+00:00

Devastating Defeat of Schroeder's SPD

Saugen und Brennen

2003-09-21T06:09:17+00:00

Last weekend I finally joined the ranks of the Gigabyte burners and bought a NEC ND-1300A DVD burner. It's inexpensive (around 150 Euros), fast enough (4x), handles both plus and minus media, and came well-recommended by the experienced DVD freaks at work.

They also recommended CloneDVD for backing up DVD videos. I can too... 3 clicks and you've got a menu-less backup of the main title. No menus means Christopher's movies start without pushing any buttons or seeing any forced advertising or boring legal disclaimers. Of course, reading in encrypted discs is your own problem, especially with Germany's new copyright law. But finding Dee Eee Cee Ess Ess isn't exactly rocket science.

The same day I also bought an inexpensive vacuum cleaner, just to be able use a clever German title for this post.

is she the spawn of Satan or merely a conniving and devious bitch?

2003-09-21T06:09:15+00:00

Is she the spawn of Satan or merely a conniving and devious bitch?

Twins sweep White Sox, increase AL Central lead

2003-09-19T08:09:54+00:00

Twins sweep White Sox, increase AL Central lead

Binary Security Updates for FreeBSD

2003-09-18T23:09:49+00:00

Binary Security Updates for FreeBSD

Let's Don't be Beastly to the Germans

2003-09-18T22:09:01+00:00

Let's Don't be Beastly to the Germans

Come In and Find The Exit

2003-09-18T19:09:07+00:00

The Abendblatt had an article today on how <a title=""Komm rein und finde raus"" href="http://www.abendblatt.de/daten/2003/09/18/209322.html">English ad slogans are not understood by German consumers. Of the 12 slogans they listed, only 2 were understood by more the half the readers, and the median was 25%. A number of people thought they understood the slogans, but actually did not (the Douglas slogan 'Come in and find out' was incorrectly thought to mean 'Come in and find the exit'). The worst undersood slogans were Mitsubishi's 'Drive Alive' ('Survive the trip'), Siemens' 'Be inspired', and RWE's 'One Group. Multi Utilities', to which even a native English speaker can only say 'Huh?'

Bin Bisy Backson

2003-09-18T17:09:37+00:00

I haven't had much time for posting lately, if you haven't noticed. At work I'm managing a provider, domain and IP switch, which should culminate this weekend when we unplug the router from the old provider. We've also had two electric outages in the past two weeks, which despite the best preparations involve several man-hours of clean-up afterwards. At home I've on single coverage this week as FP runs a pep rally for her company in Bremen. And Christopher's grandmother arrives tomorrow for a 2-1/2 week visit. We've had some nice Indian Summer weather the past couple of days, let's hope it keeps up!

Reversing Regular Expressions

2003-09-17T11:09:39+00:00

Reversing Regular Expressions

SSH Exploit

2003-09-16T20:09:37+00:00

I hate patching SSH. Especially when the exploit is announced just as I am leaving work. So do I try to apply the patch from home, or do I wait until morning?

I selected apply from home, and of course the ssh daemon killed my connection and wouldn't let me back in. Nuts.

Verisign Breaks DNS

2003-09-16T12:09:42+00:00

Verisign Breaks DNS

A bot plays Star Wars Galaxies... Dude!

2003-09-16T09:09:31+00:00

A bot plays Star Wars Galaxies... Dude!

2003-09-16T09:09:25+00:00

Großraumbüro mit Hund

Public Says $87 Billion Too Much

2003-09-15T19:09:32+00:00

Public Says $87 Billion Too Much (for Iraq)

The Perfect Army for Iraq: NATO

2003-09-14T17:09:48+00:00

The Perfect Army for Iraq: NATO

Bilingual conversations

2003-09-14T04:09:35+00:00

Bilingual conversations

The latest obscenity has seven letters

2003-09-13T16:09:21+00:00

The latest obscenity has seven letters

mimi smartypants is somebody's mommy

2003-09-13T07:09:06+00:00

mimi smartypants is somebody's mommy

Hurt

2003-09-12T21:09:30+00:00

This evening's Heute Journal, the late news on ZDF, ended with the video of Hurt by Johnny Cash, in full, with German subtitles, without comment. A fitting tribute.

Hope Against Hope

2003-09-12T01:09:50+00:00

BuzzMachine (on travelling to the memorial service yesterday): "The subway -- the 1 -- pulls past the closed World Trade Center stop and, as it always does, it slows as if in respect"

The subways in Berlin used to do the same at the boarded-up stations on the east side of the wall, as if they had hope against hope that a passenger would somehow be waiting at the platform.

Those stations are open now. It may take years, but hope sometimes wins out.

(originally left as a comment at Buzz Machine)

Shock Horror Drama

2003-09-11T19:09:46+00:00

On this anniversary, there are some reminders that all that is violent and evil in the world is not al-Qaida. The arrest in Munich of neo-Nazis in possession of 1.7 kg of TNT, or the stabbing death of Anna Lindh in Stockholm. Or, as a reminder of evil in times past, the death of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

Freedom makes us vulnerable, and free people are always at risk. The 'war on terror' won't change that, regardless if the result is win, lose or draw. Maybe it's a mistake to even call it a 'war'. I wonder, if by focusing exclusively on an enemy that inflicted such a painful wound 2 years ago, whether we risk losing sight of other enemies of our freedom, or risk giving up our own freedom in exchange for a false sense of security, or even becoming ourselves the very evil that we are convinced that we fight.

And yet living in freedom is more secure than living under tyranny.

FreshPorts: mail/mozilla-thunderbird

2003-09-11T18:09:59+00:00

FreshPorts: mail/mozilla-thunderbird

Anna Lindh

2003-09-11T11:09:29+00:00

The Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh died this morning from stab wounds suffered in an attack in a Stockholm department store yesterday. mymarkup.net has a list of (mostly Swedish) blog entries on the murder, and Imaginary magnitude has some links to Swedish/English blogs. steffanie.net's Deutsch für Anfänger has some links in English.

Swedish Foreign Minister Dies After Attack

2003-09-11T08:09:12+00:00

Swedish Foreign Minister Dies After Attack

Time Stood Still

2003-09-11T07:09:32+00:00

Talking Points Memo: "This weekend I watched a CNN documentary about September 11th... There was one set of images that got to me most, ones I didn't remember seeing before. As we all have, I'd seen many times the crushing images of bodies falling the hundreds of feet from the upper floors of the towers. But I hadn't seen or didn't remember the close-ups, the zoom-ins of people on the upper floors leaning out the windows and waiving shirts or clothes into the air, trying to grab the attention of helicopters circling nearby, hoping for help. To me these sorts of images are worse than all the rest, the bodies falling, all of them. There is something unbearable about seeing people clinging to hope when, you know, there is no hope. Their fate is sealed; they just didn't know it yet. Those were the pictures that even today made me grit my teeth and twist up my face."

Swedish FM Anna Lindh stabbed

2003-09-11T04:09:37+00:00

Swedish FM Anna Lindh stabbed

SMS Server Tools: programs to send and receive SMS using a simple file-based interface and one or more GSM modems

2003-09-11T04:09:30+00:00

SMS Server Tools: send and receive SMS using a simple file-based interface and a GSM modem

hamburg.de in 22 languages

2003-09-10T04:09:42+00:00

Kiezblo(g/ck): hamburg.de in 22 languages

Why Bruce Springsteen should not be made the skipper of a nuclear sub

2003-09-10T04:09:24+00:00

Why Bruce Springsteen should not be made the skipper of a nuclear sub

Please Wear Yesterday's Underwear to Authenticate

2003-09-10T03:09:49+00:00

Please Wear Yesterday's Underwear to Authenticate

Co-founder Joy to leave Sun

2003-09-09T17:09:18+00:00

Co-founder Joy to leave Sun

The growth of Denglish is troubling some Germans

2003-09-09T16:09:34+00:00

The growth of Denglish is troubling some Germans

German blogger series (III): PapaScott

2003-09-09T11:09:57+00:00

German blogger series (III): PapaScott

Iraq plan to increase US deficit to 4.7 pct of GDP

2003-09-09T09:09:14+00:00

Iraq plan to increase US deficit to 4.7 pct of GDP

Rome In A Day (Or Two)

2003-09-08T18:09:57+00:00

Our anniversary weekend in Rome was everything we hoped it would be. Warm weather, great sights, quiet hotel, and best of all, we could sleep in (twice!) without the tap-tap-tap of little feet coming into our bedroom.

Unfortunately Mama came down with a head cold, so we had to hold off on some of the walking and let her nap in the afternoon. I guess it was her revenge for my coming down with the bug for our weekend in Berlin this spring. Now we're even.

Rome is a compact city with a cheap and functional Metro (note I don't say clean, spacious or comfortable), so it's easy to see a lot with just your feet and a map. Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, St. Peter's Square, Sistine Chapel (yes, Mama did decide to set foot at the Vatican after all), Colosseum, Forum.

I'm surprised how German my eye has become. I first noticed that half the moving sidewalks at the airport were broken. I noticed how slow the Airport 'Express' to the city travelled, how many people were in uniform not doing anything, and how the conversation in the street was always loud, fast and furious. I'm sure these are all prejudices, to which there is always a little truth.

I was impressed with how the entire city seemed to be walking on the Via del Corso on Saturday evening. The coffee everywhere is good... even the train station kiosk has a commercial espresso machine. And despite the speed of the traffic, if you step onto the crosswalk, it will usually stop for you... or speed around you.

We enjoyed ourselves, and we are already planning our next trip. We'll learn a few words of Italian for next time, and we'll bring Christopher along. He's interested in knights and castles at the moment, and he'll go nuts over centurions and ancient ruins, we're sure. We know we'll be back, because we tossed a coin in the Trevi Fountain to ensure our return.

Every 10th student in Germany is not a German citizen

2003-09-08T05:09:17+00:00

Every 10th student in Germany is not a German citizen

Where IKEA gets the names

2003-09-04T16:09:46+00:00

Where IKEA gets the names

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.2

2003-09-04T02:09:50+00:00

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.2

Anniversary

2003-09-04T02:09:45+00:00

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the grounding of the company and the formation of a more perfect union, the founding members of the firm will be on retreat for the following few days to reflect on the firm's past and its prospects for the future. The Marketing and Public Relations activities of the company will be on hiatus during this period, but the firm will be happy to serve you in the usual manner again on Monday. The firm thanks you for your patience. Have a nice day.

Ex-Patriotism

2003-09-03T20:09:22+00:00

The interviews by Thomas Nephew of German expat bloggers got me thinking: September 1st is not only the date that Hitler invaded Poland, but the date in 1990 of our arrival in Germany, a country at that time re-united in currency but not yet in fact. We had a cart full of suitcases, 3 cats, but no furniture, no apartment, no car, and our life savings in a cashier's check. We had only one job for the two of us. And only my wife could speak the language.

The idea of moving to Germany had only occurred to us 2 months before. We had been in Arizona for a year, following a potential job that never materialized and landing in the middle of the real estate slump (remember Charles Keating?). Someone suggested that it would be a good time for Mama to return to Germany... the Wall was down, and business would be expanding. That someone had contacts with the international division of her company, phone calls were made, and she was offered a job. We decided to hitch our wagon to her star, and she accepted. July 1990 was World Cup in Italy. We jokingly told one another than if the Germans won, we would leave. They did, and we left. We wanted to stay for 5 years. We're now on 13.

Business was good in Germany in the '90s, and with her American work ethic and German determination, she was able to work her way further than she ever could have in the States. And we now have a house and a child, and we just can't pick up and change continents on a whim like we did back then. But with Germany now in a seemingly permanent slump, I can't help but wonder... if we had lived our lives 13 years later, and we were being offered the German opportunity now instead of in 1990, would we accept it? Somehow I think the answer would be no.

Horst mentions Led Zeppelin and Heino in the same breath

2003-09-03T18:09:01+00:00

Horst mentions Led Zeppelin and Heino in the same breath

Exploring the limits of CSS Layout

2003-09-03T03:09:07+00:00

Exploring the limits of CSS Layout

McDonald?s sets global ad campaign

2003-09-02T17:09:55+00:00

McDonald?s sets global ad campaign

No Complaints

2003-09-02T02:09:14+00:00

The relaunch of my work site has now been up over a week, with no negative comments. And almost no positive comments either. I did work out how to get the navigation bar to work at small screen sizes, using some dynamic positioning in JavaScript. You can try it if you like. The red dot is supposed to stay at the bottom of the screen, or get pushed down if the menus are too long (i.e. if the top of the dot is higher than the bottom of the menus, the position of the dot is changed from absolute to static). It doesn't work yet in Konqueror (the dot is always statically positioned, even if there's plenty of room), and I'm guessing it doesn't work yet in Safari either.

The menus are dynamically generated from a simple XML file (originating from an Excel table saved as CSV text) with the buttons created from Type 1 fonts with GD and t1lib (first time I've used GD in production, I was always unhappy with quality before), cached, of course (the filenames are md5sums of the arguments passed to the GD script). If you use Netscape 4 you get a static table, otherwise you see script-less CSS rollovers (using :hover, images soon to be preloaded).

Yes, I know that frames are passé in the 21st century, but Marketing wants all the elements to stay fixed, and postition:fixed doesn't work in Internet Explorer. A non-framed version is coming. Since I'm paid to be a sys admin, not a web coder, improvements to the site will be slow, but hopefully steady. None of this would have been possible without reading Eric Meyer, Danny Goodman, and Jeffrey Zeldman. And, of course, I'm only posting about my work site at all because I'm hoping for constructive criticism.

Unions Short of Labor

2003-09-01T19:09:11+00:00

Today is Labor Day in the States, and it is thus somehow appropriate to report on Germany's second largest and most troubled union IG Metall, which elected a new chairman in an extraordinary session yesterday. That the traditionalist Jürgen Peters would be elected had already been decided in a smoke-filled room. That he would receive the vote of only 66% of the delegates was a surprise.

Tobias and Hans (trust me on the links, I can't get either to work at the moment) have already commented on the (ir)relevance of unions in modern German politics. I can only point to the ZDF archive article from April 2003 on declining membership in the IG Metall. Of their 2.64 million members, 8% are youth (students and apprentices?), 24% are pensioners, and 300,000 (6%) are unemployed. That means of that 2.64 million, 38%, or over 1 million, do not work. (I'm not even counting full-time union and workers' council functionaries...)

Only 290,000 members are in the eastern states, so it is no surprise that the strike in the east for the 35-hour work week failed so miserably.

Is it any wonder that when the unions came out against Schröder's reforms, the Chancellor simply laughed in their collective faces?

Disclaimer: IG Metall also represents workers in the computer software industry. They would be 'my' union if I were inclined to join, and they helped organize the worker's council at my employer.

Update: Lilli, an active SPD member, is also somewhat doubtful about Peters.

Seeing Rome in One Day?

2003-09-01T18:09:40+00:00

Seeing Rome in One Day?

Milestones

2003-09-01T04:09:23+00:00

In German Kinder language, the two functions one can perform on the toilet are pi-pi and ah-ah. This weekend Christopher performed ah-ah all by himself, twice. And there was much rejoicing, from both parents and child.

I guess because we had toilets on our minds, we spontaneously bought new toilet seats for both bathrooms. You can do wild and crazy things like this when you own instead of rent.

We also took down all the safety latches from the kitchen cupboards, since the risk of Christopher randomly emptying the cupboards has decreased to nearly zero. The guard on the stove will stay up for a while, though.

On Sunday we assembled some cabinets for Oma. Unfortunatey, she selected the cabinets solely on the basis of price, and they were a royal pain to assemble. If you get plain white cabinets from Obi, the DIY chain with the beaver, do NOT get the Simply 'Basic' model. You'll be sorry.

Afterwards we took Oma and Christopher to the festival at Hof Wörme, an organic farm. Christopher got to ride a horse and a tractor, build a straw puppet, and jump in a hay stack and toss hay in all directions. A good time was had by all, but a bath in the evening was badly needed.

Indecent proposals

2003-08-29T19:08:25+00:00

If you're bored and want to practice your German, you can try to make indecent proposals to Eve, the avatar at YelloStrom, until she throws a hissy fit and leaves. Or just enter "zieh dich aus" ('take off your clothes') in the 'Ihre Frage' field and click OK. Don't worry, Eve is always safe for work. More hints for insulting Eve are at H-Blog.

2003-08-29T08:08:40+00:00

Schröder, Fischer to stand again in 2006

Wayward Webloggers Blogging Co-op

2003-08-29T02:08:52+00:00

Wayward Webloggers Blogging Co-op

Private Lynch honorably discharged, so she's now free to tell/sell her story.

2003-08-28T06:08:44+00:00

Private Lynch honorably discharged, so she's now free to tell/sell her story

Compliments

2003-08-27T19:08:32+00:00

Mama's coming back tonight from a 3-day business meeting in Munich. Father and son will be both happy to see her. I, for one, will trying apply what Lyssa said about women and compliments. After so many years of marriage, however, it's hard to come up with new ones, and the easy thing to do is to take things for granted and just not bother. And I've certainly been guilty of that. So, Mama, you are rock and roll.

Except that in a personal relationship, I don't suppose that compliments given via a public weblog really count.

stimate of 2004 US budget deficit: $480 billion

2003-08-26T19:08:04+00:00

Estimate of 2004 US budget deficit: $480 billion

FreeBSD Foundation Java Downloads

2003-08-26T08:08:30+00:00

FreeBSD Foundation Java Downloads

CityDesk: Version 2.0

2003-08-26T04:08:28+00:00

CityDesk: Version 2.0

2003-08-25T18:08:00+00:00

<a title="LEO Results for "drängeln"" href="http://dict.leo.org/?search=dr%E4ngeln&searchLoc=0&relink=on&spellToler=standard&sectHdr=on&tableBorder=1&cmpType=relaxed&lang=en">drängeln: to jostle, to press, to push, to swarm. None of which anyone wants to experience at 230 km/h from a Mercedes CL 600 riding on your tail.

But that's exactly what a 21-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter experienced on the A5 near Karlsruhe last month. The Mercedes accelerated to within 0.5 m of their rear bumper, forcing them off the road and into a tree, killing them both: The driver then fled the scene of the accident. A massive manhunt resulted in a warrant today against a test driver employed by Daimler Chrysler.

We've experienced this fear, even in Mama's BMW, which can easily keep pace with almost any other vehicle on the road. On a winter day a few years ago on an extremely icy autobahn, we were nearly forced off the road by a black Audi. A month later, we received a letter from the Autobahn police. They had been observing the Audi, and asked if we remembered the incident and whether we had felt threatened. We certainly did remember, and we had felt threatened.

We heard nothing further. But in the land of freie Fahrt für freie Bürger, you enter the left lane at your own peril.

PHP 4.3.3 is released

2003-08-25T16:08:52+00:00

PHP 4.3.3 is released

2003-08-25T16:08:12+00:00

The controversial exhibition Körperwelten (Body Worlds) by Prof. Gunther von Hagen is opening in Hamburg this week, and showing through 4 January. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the exhibition is at the former Erotic Art Museum on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg's red-light and entertainment main street. I'm personally looking forward to the chance to see the plastinated human bodies for myself, and it will be something special to show to my mother when she comes to visit her grandson next month. I personally believe that while the human spirit is holy and should be revered, the human body is not.

Andrea and André visited Körperwelten in Cologne in April 2000.

blo.gs or blogrolling.com?

2003-08-25T15:08:27+00:00

paradox1x: blo.gs or blogrolling.com?

Jettison: Ton decides to switch to Linux

2003-08-25T15:08:25+00:00

Jettison: Ton decides to switch to Linux

Conquerors or Liberators

2003-08-25T03:08:27+00:00

I remember thinking back in April, as the war in Iraq was drawing to a close, that the whole debate in the press how the Iraqis would view the US, er, I mean coalition troops was kind of pointless. The Iraqis would be deciding for themselves, without the help of western journalists or editorialists, it would be a process that would take many months, and the proof would be in the facts and events in Iraq, not in the words of pundits.

Even in April it was clear that an troops would be in Iraq for at least two years, well past the 2004 election. And I also remember thinking back then that, from his timing of the war, President Bush was handing the fate of his re-election away from US voters and to the Iraqi people. If, say, in the summer of 2004 the occupation is going badly, the Iraqis do not feel liberated and 'better off than they were 4 years ago', if US soldiers are still killing and being killed, Iraq would then dominate the US election and Bush would be like LBJ in 1968, namely toast.

I also decided back in April that it would take at least 6 months to draw any conclusions as to whether the occupation is going well or poorly. But maybe the American public isn't going to wait that long, according to a Newsweek poll:

49 percent of registered voters would not back the president for a second term if the vote were held now. Forty-four percent would support Mr. Bush's re-election.... Only 18 percent of those polled believe a stable, democratic government can be set up in Iraq in the long term. And only 13 percent of respondents said U.S. efforts to establish security in Iraq and rebuild the country have gone well

It looks like the future is now. Or, as Buzz Machine commented: "The war was a success. But the peace is hell."

The Mysterious Hot Tub Truck

2003-08-25T02:08:46+00:00

The Mysterious Hot Tub Truck

Congrats to Nico and family, their daughter has arrived!

2003-08-24T14:08:22+00:00

Congrats to Sibylle and Nico, their daughter has arrived!

Wir brauchen Amerika, und Amerika braucht uns

2003-08-24T12:08:35+00:00

Wir brauchen Amerika, und Amerika braucht uns

Apollo 13

2003-08-23T20:08:17+00:00

Apollo 13 is on TV tonight, and Christopher is staying up late to watch. Here he's building rockets.

Stress

2003-08-22T20:08:05+00:00

This would have been a stress day even if I hadn't stayed too long at the Blogger Treff last night, getting to bed at 12:30 and getting up at 5:30. I'm getting too old for that kind of silly behavior.

We haven't really been bothered by the latest virus nonsense. Our firewall and virus checkers have done their jobs. But wanting to track all those funny data packets reminded us that our snortdatabase (1.5 GB) was too slow, so I got to set up a ~~new~~ recycled database machine. But MySQL really does run much faster on a dual P-III 500 with 512MB than on a single P-II 400 with 256MB.

Our Internet provider is abondoning the domestic German market and sold our account to Tiscali. They couldn't match the old price, so we're switching to a local firm that already provides our phone service. Either way, we need to switch IP addresses, and worse, we have to fight to keep a Class C network. Writing a "creative network infrastructure" sounds better than "outright lying about our needs", but it comes down to the same thing.

And then there's web relaunch that went online this evening. We did the new design on the cheap. Rather than commissioning a web site, we had our print agency send us screenshots for which the overworked web admin himself wrote up the HTML, despite not having written real HTML in years (and to think I volunteered to do it). It's still got frames, but it has more CSS and almost no tables, so it's an improvement. And I can't blame a brain-dead agency for bad code, so I have incentive to keep making it better. Take a look if you like, especially if you have a Mac, since we don't have any modern Macs at all for testing. Yes, the design breaks down at less than 1024x768, I'm still working on that. And blame Lotus Domino for the FONT tags in the content frame. I'll tidy that up somehow.

Tagesschau RSS

2003-08-22T13:08:26+00:00

Tagesschau RSS

Schill Out

2003-08-21T05:08:08+00:00

When I posted on Ronald Schill's dramatic ouster from the Hamburg Senate (cabinet), I didn't offer much comment because I didn't know how to adequately explain the situation to outsiders. I still don't. I've always found Hamburg politics to be a bit wacky. Mayors resign when they win elections but by not enough. Elections get thrown out on technicalities. The local Greens split into two parties over the war in Kosovo. Grassroots parties form on the right, join the government for a term, then disappear. The color of police uniforms becomes a major issue. (Then again, coming from Minnesota, I know wacky politics. I say only Jesse Ventura.)

Given this wackinesss, Ronald Schill is still the most polarizing political figure I have ever encountered. Even Ronald Reagan during my college days in the 1980s did generate as much animosity. They threw eggs at Reagan. At Schill they throw rocks. The news of his departure led to a spontaneous street party (complete with riot police).

The logical consequence would be new elections, but the governing parties are rather desparate to avoid them, since they have everything to lose. They hope to limp along the next two years with a Schill-less Schill Party, with the popular Beust leading a Senate of zeros.

FreeBSD: Running 'make installworld' from CD

2003-08-20T04:08:38+00:00

Sorry, non-tech folks. This is a sysadmin voodoo post.

I maintain several FreeBSD machines. When a security alert is issued, the standard procedure is to update the source for your release with cvs or cvsup, then recompile and reinstall the system with 'make buildworld' and 'make installworld'. It's also fairly standard procedure to 'make buildworld' on one machine, then export /usr/src and /usr/obj read-only via NFS to do installworld on the target machine.

However, my FreeBSD machines are behind a firewall inside a DMZ. I can't mount NFS through the firewall, and I don't really want to be compiling systems on underpowered small-disk single-purpose machines in a DMZ. At first, I used installation CDs to update major versions. This is not very flexible and may not include the latest security patches. Lately I've been plugging the DMZ machines temporarily into the LAN to update over NFS. This is unelegant and may damage the cables and switches (not to mention my fingers) when unplugging.

However, through trial and error (I haven't seen this tip anywhere), I figured out that after running 'make buildworld' on the build machine, I can burn /usr/src and /usr/obj on CD, and then run 'make installworld' from it on the target machines. The trick is you can't just have symlinks from /usr/src and /usr/obj to the CD. You've got to have actual mounts. In this case, null mounts work wonders. (Ignore the bit about 'not fully supported' and 'this doesn't work'.) If the CD is mounted on /cdrom, then:
mount -t null /cdrom/src /usr/src mount -t null /cdrom/obj /usr/obj

You can then cd /usr/src and do your make installs and mergemaster. If you're really brave, you can do this while your services are running (single-user mode is for wimps), and then your only downtime is the reboot.

inessential.com: How to deal with broken feeds

2003-08-20T02:08:17+00:00

inessential.com: How to deal with broken feeds

No Mercy

2003-08-19T18:08:26+00:00

Deutsche Welle: No More Mercy for Hamburg's 'Judge Merciless': "Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust fired the city-state's controversial interior minister on Tuesday. He said that 'law and order' man Ronald Schill had threatened to publicly out Beust as a homosexual. 'I have dismissed Mr. Schill,' Beust told reporters. 'I felt forced to dismiss him because Schill's character is not suited to the office.'

"The two men had met to discuss Schill's deputy Walter Wellinghausen, who Beust also dismissed. Wellinghausen, who had been Schill's attorney, has been accused of illegally continuing to collect pay in another capacity after he became privy counselor. According to Beust, Schill said the mayor had made his ostensible partner his justice minister and that the two had a homosexual relationship."

California and Texas have nothing on us!

Update: Readers of German should read what Lyssa has to say. But then, readers of German should be reading Lyssa anyway. Das ist ein Befehl!

Hamburg: von Beust fires Schill

2003-08-19T10:08:11+00:00

Hamburg: von Beust fires Schill

German Big Birthdays

2003-08-19T06:08:07+00:00

German big birthdays

Study: Which country is least likey to suffer a terrorist attack

2003-08-18T19:08:18+00:00

Study: Which country is least likey to suffer a terrorist attack?

Night life

2003-08-18T02:08:52+00:00

Yet another 'where have all the US tourists gone' article noted by Instapundit. Funny how these articles never mention Germany. I've seen statistics that the number of US visitors is down, but haven't read anyone complaining. The German tourist industry industry seems more concerned with keeping German tourists at home.

Even though Hamburg is a big tourist town, I've never noticed very many Americans among the foreign accents. Maybe it's because the main attractions are theater and sex (er, I mean, night life), both in the German language.

Old News

2003-08-17T18:08:56+00:00

Seeing the status of Nico's childbirth countdown, I remembered that I still hadn't copied over all the posts on Christopher's birth from my old weblog. So here are Birthing Christopher and Reflections on Childbirth, backdated and still not complete.

Sahara hostages free?

2003-08-17T17:08:38+00:00

Sahara hostages free?

Ars Technica: The Nigerian SCO Connection

2003-08-17T16:08:57+00:00

Ars Technica: The Nigerian SCO Connection

Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008?

2003-08-17T16:08:51+00:00

Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008?

TAZ: 5-times more wiretaps per capita in Germany as in USA

2003-08-17T12:08:28+00:00

TAZ: 5-times more wiretaps per capita in Germany as in USA

QuarkXPress Comes to OS X

2003-08-16T19:08:50+00:00

QuarkXPress Comes to OS X

Guten Abend, Bochum

2003-08-16T14:08:22+00:00

Guten Abend, Bochum

Radioactive Nests of Hanford Wasps

2003-08-16T02:08:06+00:00

Radioactive Nests of Hanford Wasps

Powerage

2003-08-16T00:08:06+00:00

As Lilli noted, the US blackout was the top story in the German media today, with special broadcasts, the top 3 slots on Spiegel Online, and the whole bit. That seems strange to me, since the blackout is a purely domestic story, but I guess it does come with good footage. The title on ARD, 'Amerika ohne Strom', was just a tad overdramatic, and a reminder that German reporters rarely venture outside New York and Washington. Maybe for them New York City is all of America.

The other theme was <a title="Strom in Deutschland: "Unser Spinnennetz ist engmaschiger" - Wissenschaft - SPIEGEL ONLINE" href="http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,261324,00.html">'it can't happen here', that such a long and wide-ranging blackout is extremely unlikely in central Europe. They didn't really explain why it can't happen here, except to claim that the electicity network is more modern, is less centralized, and has more reserve capacity in Europe than in the northeastern US. I did notice that during the heat wave (which broke here yesterday), nuclear plants in Germany, including our local plants on the Elbe, actually cut back on production. This was in order not to exceed limits on the temperature of water they returned to the environment, which in some cases was cooler than the water they were taking in.

And the reports smugly noted that per-capita electricity usage here is half that of the US. They didn't bother to compare prices.

movablemeta with dangeroustype!

2003-08-15T08:08:23+00:00

movablemeta with dangeroustype!

CWA and Verizon: Striking by not going on strike

2003-08-15T03:08:23+00:00

CWA and Verizon: Striking by not going on strike

2nd Hamburg Blogger Meeting

2003-08-14T18:08:05+00:00

The second semi-periodic Hamburg Blogger Meeting has been scheduled for next Thursday evening, 21 Aug, in the Marktstube (Marktstr. 119) at 7:30 pm.

Admission is by invitation only and costs $500.

Just kidding. But if you plan to show up, an email to the organizers would be nice, so they can reserve an appropriate table.

Hey, cool, I broke my weblog!

2003-08-14T14:08:10+00:00

Hey, cool, I broke my weblog!

Kablog

2003-08-14T13:08:00+00:00

I created this entry on my nokia 3650, T9, and Kablog. Now my fingers are tired!

Humanitarian success in postwar Iraq is essential

2003-08-13T03:08:40+00:00

Humanitarian success in postwar Iraq is essential

Just Call Me Ami

2003-08-13T02:08:39+00:00

"wir sprechen Amerikan" is from a post about languages on the upcoming California ballot, but it is closer to the truth than you might think. In Germany, the language we speak in the US is often referred to as "Amerikanisch", as if it has nothing to do with English. Even better is to be referred to as a "US-Amerikaner", which even though it incorporates the beloved letters 'USA', to me sounds like PC mumbo-jumbo. I mean, even though there is North America and South America, there does not exist an 'America' of which the US is a subset. Please, just call me 'Ami'!

(Orginally submitted as a comment to Buzz Machine, but I decided it was worth a post.)

Boltenhagen

2003-08-13T02:08:25+00:00

On Sunday we visited Boltenhagen, on the Baltic coast between Lübeck and Wismar. It's a traditional seaside resort town, celebrating its 200th anniversary this year, very well kept and with a very nice beach. The day was a bit breezy (perfect for the windsurfing competition that happened to be going on), but as relief from the heat we didn't mind at all.

In theory, Boltenhagen would be just 30 minutes past Lübeck. In practice, thanks to bad roads (er, I mean the lack of infrastructure in the 'new states') and Sunday traffic, it took us 2 hours to cover the 20 km of 2-lane road from Lübeck to the turn-off to the north. Luckily Christopher held up like a trooper, and the day was not ruined. But all I can say is hurry up and finish the damned Baltic Autobahn A20 already!

The traffic jam ended in Selmsdorf, the first village east of the former border. Amidst the half-completed housing and the ghost-town commercial park, we noticed a dirt road leading into a gully, with a street sign "Strasse der Freiheit" - Street of Freedom. I wish we had had a camera ready. I guess you can have them build your Street of Freedom, but you have to pave it for yourself.

European bikers are not wussies

2003-08-12T14:08:41+00:00

European bikers are not wussies

Vacation

2003-08-11T08:08:57+00:00

We're on vacation this week, enjoying the sights of the Grand Duchy of Balconia (i.e. we're staying at home). Updates will occur whenever I feel like it, but that's the usual policy here anyway, so noone should notice anything different.

Fan Club

2003-08-09T10:08:19+00:00

To get you through the heat wave, and in blatant violation of the license, here is a cool breeze from Industrial Technology & Witchcraft. They have four fans, but here up north we can get by with just one.

Speaking Terms

2003-08-09T04:08:21+00:00

THE PRESIDENT: "I want to say something about Afghanistan. Germany has taken a very active role in Afghanistan and we're very thankful for that. As NATO steps forward, Germany has assumed a big responsibility. And we really appreciate the German participation. And the reason I bring that up is, is that that's a change from six months ago. And not only is Germany's participation important, it's robust, more robust than we would have anticipated. I look forward to thanking Chancellor Schroeder for that."

All politics aside, it makes me feel a lot better when the president of my native country is on speaking terms with my adopted country.

And, if you're a German unhappy with the current American president, you should be happy too, since Germany has a much better chance to influence American policy when they are speaking (slim) than when they are not (none).

What software? You mean like Blogger and Movable Type?

2003-08-09T03:08:51+00:00

What software? You mean like Blogger and Movable Type?

Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush

2003-08-08T05:08:45+00:00

Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush

Advice for Democrats, from Repulbicans

2003-08-08T05:08:26+00:00

Advice for Democrats, from Repulbicans

Quote Unquote

2003-08-08T02:08:50+00:00

Thanks to Heiko, a controversy from the German blogging community has leaked into the Anglosphere. How should bloggers quote one another? Should a quote be immediately identifiable as a quote? Should a link always be permalink?

I personally bristle at any rules that bloggers 'must' or 'should' do anything, except be true to their own principles and to themselves. I don't blog to share knowledge. I don't blog to be part of a community. I blog for myself, for my own enjoyment. I don't have an obligation to follow any rules with my weblog, except to please me. So Dave Winer is free to edit his posts during the day. Jörg Kantel is free to quote without attribution. (Although once you read his blog for a few days, it's pretty easy to pick out his words from the quotes, even without the quotation marks. And for all I know, maybe he didn't even invent his catch phrase <a title="Google Search: "Allerschärfstes Willkommen"" href="http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Allersch%E4rfstes Willkommen%22&btnG=Google Search">"Allerschärfstes Willkommen".) And I'm free to quote and paraphrase in my Quick Links to get things to fit in the tool tip bar.

And those who blog seriously, professionally, for business, or as consultants, just have to accept weblogs for what they are, namely mostly unserious and unprofessional. You might as well try to herd cats.

Update It's appropriate to add a quote here, from Jonathon Delacour (welcome back, by the way), in regards to ethics and blogging: "I instinctively mistrust attempts... to impose rules or standards, no matter how well-intentioned they might be."

Spiegel Online: DDR Reloaded

2003-08-07T12:08:45+00:00

Spiegel Online: DDR Reloaded

2003-08-07T09:08:24+00:00

Spiegel Online: Internet-Initiative - Rettet die Sesamstraße!

A web server for Symbian Series 60 phones

2003-08-07T04:08:58+00:00

A web server for Symbian Series 60 phones

the sides of the hold became too hot to touch

2003-08-06T19:08:44+00:00

the sides of the hold became too hot to touch

A Few Tips for Writing Useful Libraries in PHP

2003-08-06T07:08:01+00:00

LaughingMeme: A Few Tips for Writing Useful Libraries in PHP

Nacktbloggen - naked blogging

2003-08-05T19:08:28+00:00

Nacktbloggen - naked blogging. The way to beat the European heat wave.

Are flash mobs always pointless?

2003-08-05T06:08:26+00:00

Are flash mobs always pointless?

CalPundit: Postwar Planning (or the lack thereof)

2003-08-05T03:08:35+00:00

CalPundit: Postwar planning (meaning the lack thereof)

Subsidized Advertising

2003-08-05T03:08:22+00:00

A 'red herring' in English is a 'Ente' (duck) in German, at least as far a news stories go. Yesterday's ducks in the German news were a call to shorten school vacations and a call for anti-smoking regulations in public places. More interesting, as noted by Marstonalia, is the online partnership between ZDF and the perfume chain Douglas, which may well violate media laws regulating public broadcasting. Not because of the mixing of public and private content, which happens all the time on the air, but because the mix is on the Internet, where ARD/ZDF do not have a license to operate and thus are competing (which public funds?) with private broadcasters and other online media as well. The Internet activities of ARD/ZDF have always been in a grey area of media regulation, and in my opinion should be strictly non-commercial, given their public monopoly in broadcasting. Selling perfume for Douglas is anything but non-commercial.

Short Sheeted

2003-08-04T19:08:39+00:00

Last week, on July 30 to be exact, 2 days before the beginning of the new month, my employer informed us that short time was cancelled for the month of August, that we would be back on full time. Have we turned the corner? Is this the light at the end of the tunnel? Not exactly. One of our projects was having trouble meeting a deadline and needed to be fully staffed. However, the firm was unable to cut enough hours from other projects to continue to meet the legal requirements for short time, so that means thanks to disorganization, we're all back on full time. Short time will probably resume in September.

For my department, which provides internal service and support, that means we have to be extremely productive this month, since we want people to notice that we can accomplish much more when we are at full strength. Otherwise, management might have the idea that we are overstaffed and cut us back permanently. Funny politics. To protect our jobs, we have to accomplish less when we have less time, and more when we have more time, even though the amount of work is constant. It almost sounds like we are working for the government, and have to spend our entire budget this period to make sure we are fully funded for the next period. Don't ask any questions, just do what you're told!

It was actually kind of nice having two nearly-fully-paid afternoons off per week.

2003-08-04T14:08:44+00:00

Sesamstraße retten!

How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less

2003-08-04T10:08:47+00:00

How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less

Radio UserLand : TrackBack for Radio

2003-08-04T10:08:35+00:00

Radio UserLand : TrackBack for Radio

SWR: Ich glotz TV!

2003-08-04T10:08:28+00:00

SWR: Ich glotz TV!

Beach Day

2003-08-03T06:08:57+00:00

It's going to be warm again today, so we're heading for the beach (early, so we beat the traffic).

Christopher is still asking to see the Springsteen video to watch Bruce slide. Is he too young to be watching music videos? Not if it's good music.

I, too, was a TypePad beta tester. I didn't look at it that closely, since I'm not looking to replace my present hoster (namely, me). But I did make a couple suggestions in regards to color-blind users. They're opening up to the general public tomorrow, and if anyone wants a 20% discount for 'friends of beta-testers', let me know and say you're my friend. I'm allowed to have 20 friends.

Did Sadaam want to hide the fact that he had disarmed?

2003-08-02T06:08:51+00:00

Did Sadaam want to hide the fact that he had disarmed?

US health care, you can't beat the system, so just join it

2003-08-02T06:08:41+00:00

US health care, you can't beat the system, so just join it

Linux is not a product

2003-08-02T04:08:39+00:00

Linux is not a product

Abgerutscht

2003-08-01T18:08:20+00:00

This week I got the Springsteen Special Tour Edition DVD, with 5 songs from The Rising. Christopher really likes it, especially when Bruce slides across the stage ('Das müssen wir Mama zeigen!'). I'm glad it includes Dancing In The Dark, since we missed the finale of his concert in Hamburg (we had to hit the road to pick up Christopher from the babysitter before midnight).

Where the Good Jobs Are Going

2003-08-01T13:08:00+00:00

TIME.com: Where the Good Jobs Are Going

Heise: Turkish Police use GPRS and Tablet PCs against Traffic Offenders

2003-08-01T04:08:11+00:00

Heise: Turkish Police use GPRS and Tablet PCs against Traffic Offenders

2003-07-31T10:07:05+00:00

Düsseldorf Keyboard

newsrack: Another unnecessary tradeoff: anthrax vs. AIDS

2003-07-31T09:07:07+00:00

newsrack: Another unnecessary tradeoff: anthrax vs. AIDS

Open Source Flying

2003-07-29T20:07:55+00:00

Open Source Flying

Life for a life

2003-07-29T19:07:27+00:00

Yesterday Markus Gäfgen was sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnap and murder of the 11 year old Jakob von Metzler in Frankfurt last summer. This would merely be local news, except that after Gäfgen's arrest, when it was still thought the boy was alive, Frankfurt police threatened the suspect with 'severe pain' (i.e. torture) if he did not reveal the location of the boy.

The court ruled Gäfgen's police confession as inadmissible, and declared that the police conduct had done 'serious damage' to the German rule of law. However, it also ruled that the police conduct had no bearing on Gäfgen's guilt and declared the crime as extraordinary, ruling out parole after 15 years.

I'm no student of the law, but it is interesting how the German court separated the extreme breach of constitutional rights from the criminal case. An American court may well have let Gäfgen walk away scot-free.

Update: Added link to Deutsche Welle, which is more complete than the Expatica report.

Summer Closeout

2003-07-29T17:07:45+00:00

I wouldn't have thought that the beginning of the summer close-out sales in German retail would be news to anyone other than the pensioners who line up for bargains when the stores open, but Marstonalia found it worthy of mention. Not that he was thinking of flying across the Atlantic for 60%, but because the Schröder cabinet has proposed doing away with the regulation of such sales. While Marsonalia finds the regulation symbolic of a "German commitment to principles beyond commerce", most of the German press sees such regulation of retailers as blatant protection of small shops and retail unions and against the interest of consumers. Yesterday I chose to shop in a way that would please neither German retailers nor German unions. I bought a PDA on ebay, well after 8 pm and for much less than retail.

PHP5: Coming Soon to a Webserver Near You

2003-07-28T10:07:27+00:00

PHP5: Coming Soon to a Webserver Near You

Stone Cold

2003-07-26T18:07:19+00:00

Listening to our local corporate 40 station this evening, something caught my ear that I had to listen more closely. Was the north German teeny band Echt now singing in English? No, the band Deuce Project has covered the bittersweet 'don't you wish your ex would come crawling back to you so you could turn your back on her' song 'Keine Liebe', which they translated as 'Stone Cold'. Interesting that an American band would cover a German song, and a fairly intelligent song at that. Typical that the cover band gets the credit for the text and the catchy melody.

Denn Du trägst keine Liebe in Dir,
nicht für mich und für irgendwen.
Du trägst keine Liebe in Dir,
Dir nachzutrauern hat keinen Sinn mehr.
Denn Du trägst keine Liebe in Dir.
Dich zu vergessen, war nicht sehr schwer.
Denn Du trägst keine Liebe in Dir.

Ullrich vs. Armstrong

2003-07-26T11:07:58+00:00

Ullrich vs. Armstrong

World New York: Technical Self-Employment

2003-07-26T11:07:01+00:00

Technical Self-Employment

Harley Davidson Open

2003-07-25T16:07:41+00:00

Not only is this weekend supposed to have the longest traffic jams of the year (thanks to school vacation beginning in both Bavaria and Baden-Württemburg), but now 200,000 Harley fans have descended on Hamburg for the final stop of the Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary Open Road Tour. And what do Harley fans do when they arrive in Hamburg? They cruise the Reeperbahn, what else? For those of us whose offices face the best known street in the city, on a ~~hot~~ very warm day when you have to keep the windows open, it was, well, hell on wheels. And the commute home was no picnic either.

Israpundit: 22 Truths

2003-07-25T07:07:27+00:00

Israpundit: 22 Truths

2003-07-25T07:07:08+00:00

Dönermacher als neuer Ausbildungsberuf

I wish Des Moines were more like Minneapolis

2003-07-25T06:07:32+00:00

I wish Des Moines were more like Minneapolis

Son of Napster

2003-07-24T20:07:27+00:00

Son of Napster

Ban alcohol in Austrian parliament

2003-07-24T20:07:18+00:00

itw: Ban alcohol in Austrian parliament?

Summer of '43

2003-07-24T18:07:14+00:00

Today is the 60th anniversary of the beginning of Operation Gomorrah, the firebombing of Hamburg by the British that after 10 days left 40,000 dead, over 1 million homeless, and scars that the city still bears today. A memorial service was held today in the bombed-out Nikolaikirche, today a peace memorial, with Mayor von Beust and the British Ambassador. Our local paper Hamburger Abendblatt has been running a daily series since Saturday on the bombing, but is only putting text on their web site, no pictures. The series asks the question that cannot be answered and is even more relevant today: When good fights evil, how evil can good allow itself to become?

If you want people to click, say something provocative. If you want to blend in... say [it] politely

2003-07-24T13:07:34+00:00

If you want people to click, say something provocative. If you want to blend in... say [it] politely.

Poll shows many Germans see U.S. behind Sept 11

2003-07-24T04:07:59+00:00

Poll shows many Germans see U.S. behind Sept 11

Qusay and Uday

2003-07-23T18:07:54+00:00

And Iraq is now a better place, and the world as well. Whether you were for the war or not, whether you think the occupation is good or ill, I think we can all agree that everyone is better off without the Hussein brothers.

a weblog without an RSS feed is like a cheeseburger with only the bread

2003-07-23T18:07:10+00:00

a weblog without an RSS feed is like a cheeseburger with only the bread

BuzzMachine: World without editors

2003-07-23T03:07:02+00:00

BuzzMachine: World without editors

Adventures in disaster recovery

2003-07-22T14:07:51+00:00

Today I found out what happens on a virtual server when the disk space is full and a piece of spam mail arrives.

The spam gets filtered to the spam folder
The mail cannot be saved, so return to sender
The sender is the spam filter, namely me. Send an error message via mail
The mail cannot be saved, so return to sender
Repeat ad infinitum

At which point I opted to resize my diskspace. 45 minutes later, we were back online.

European Baseball: Continental Divide Despite Some Promising Signs

2003-07-22T14:07:31+00:00

European Baseball: Continental Divide Despite Some Promising Signs

One of my goals is to make (the program) so informal that calling it a program is laughable.

2003-07-22T04:07:52+00:00

One of my goals is to make (the program) so informal that calling it a program is laughable.

Smash your television, trash your DVD player, get a life!

2003-07-22T04:07:51+00:00

Smash your television, trash your DVD player, get a life!

Announcing Blosxom 2.0

2003-07-22T04:07:16+00:00

Announcing Blosxom 2.0

Be careful what you wish for

2003-07-22T03:07:40+00:00

One thng I've found while blogging is that it's impossible to know in advance what posts will get links. Some posts that I think are important and interesting don't get noticed at all, while some throwaway remark will generate lots of comments and links.

Or even start a new meme, like my joke link to entenhausen.blogplan.de last week. After seeing the third or fourth city with a blogplan, I thought to myself 'next thing you know they'll put one up for Entenhausen' (the home of Donald Duck in German), and I put up a Quick Link. That same morning, the makers of blogplan did put up a map of Entenhausen, giving me credit for the 'idea' (do I get royalties as well?), and it now has ~~nearly~~ over 60 blogs entered (PapaScott is on the dolphin).

Raining on my sleep

2003-07-22T02:07:41+00:00

I still insist that 'hot' begins at 40°C, but the last couple of days have been 'very warm'. All that energy in the atmosphere has just been discharged in the form of a thunderstorm that chased us from our bedroom in the attic. Drizzle pattering on the skylights might be romantic, but a downpour certainly is not.

We've booked our flight and hotel (burning up some of Mama's Lufthansa miles) for our anniversary getaway to Rome. Lilli asked what we're interested in seeing there. Well, we have a cheap guidebook, so we know what the main attractions are. Mama is a militant non-Cathlolic, so we don't need to see the Vatican. We mostly want to stay outside, explore, and catch some atmosphere. And we'd appreciate any tips like 'If you're in Rome for a weekend, you've just got to do this'.

Armstrong strikes back

2003-07-21T17:07:57+00:00

Armstrong strikes back

Would you trust an airline with this map?

2003-07-21T08:07:19+00:00

Would you trust an airline with this map?

John Robb's New URL

2003-07-20T16:07:48+00:00

John Robb's New URL

Wahrscheinlich ist beides gleich schlimm.

2003-07-19T18:07:53+00:00

Wahrscheinlich ist beides gleich schlimm

Endless Blitzkrieg

2003-07-19T18:07:15+00:00

Endless Blitzkrieg

People over the age of 25 shouldn't use Unix/Linux/whatever

2003-07-19T17:07:59+00:00

People over the age of 25 shouldn't use Unix/Linux/whatever

Armstrong narrowly keeps lead in Tour de France

2003-07-19T15:07:33+00:00

Armstrong narrowly keeps lead in Tour de France

Cooking in the bathtub

2003-07-18T19:07:13+00:00

A warning for young parents: in the hands of a three-year-old, an ordinary kitchen ladle can become a deadly weapon. Christopher has been on a cooking kick lately. He likes to stir the spaghetti sauce while it is simmering, and to ladle out the portions (under strict and watchful supervision, of course). So now the ladle is his personal property, and this evening he plucked it out of the dishwasher and took it with him upstairs. Within minutes, the bathroom floor was covered with a a dangerous film of soapy water, and the planned bath was cancelled for safety reasons.

He's now playing in this room with papa and baby snake. How sweet.

Ullrich gains 1:35 on Armstrong

2003-07-18T16:07:34+00:00

Ullrich gains 1:35 on Armstrong

Pilgrim Watcher

2003-07-18T07:07:26+00:00

Pilgrim Watcher

WWII Bomb Kills 2 in Salzburg

2003-07-17T18:07:45+00:00

Reuters AlertNet: Wartime bomb explodes in Austria, killing two. The American bomb with a chemical detonator was being disarmed at the Salzburg train station, when it exploded, killing two bomb squad officers and seriously injuring a third. A deadly reminder that the remains of war are dangerous even decades later.

Spiegel Online: Bomben-Explosion in Salzburg: Zwei Sprengmeister bei Entschärfung getötet

>Joel on Software: Linux in Munich, Windows will sneak in anyway

2003-07-17T08:07:50+00:00

Joel on Software: Linux in Munich, Windows will sneak in anyway

entenhausen.blogplan.de

2003-07-17T03:07:22+00:00

entenhausen.blogplan.de

Common goals

2003-07-17T00:07:14+00:00

Foreign Minister Fischer is spending the week in the US (he'd rather be vacationing in Italy, I'm sure), his first visit there since the Iraq war. Steven den Beste took the opportunity to point out he has a snowball's chance in hell of patching up German-American relations. I disagree, however, with Steven's contention that the motivations of France and Germany in regards to Iraq can be thrown into the same pot. (And what's this about Rumsfeld wanting German troops in Iraq? Or was he just wishing for the unattainable?)

Yesterday morning I heard SPD foreign affairs expert and Schröder critic Hans-Ulrich Klose in an interview by NDR Info radio . He contends that both the Europeans and Americans made big mistakes on the Iraq issue, but that whatever Schadenfreude the Europeans might feel, they don't really want the US to fail in Iraq. The Google translation of the interview is not quite intelligible, so I've cleaned it up below.

Klose: American presence in Iraq important for stability in the Near East
Hans Ulrich Klose, SPD, vice-chairman of the foreign committee in the
Bundestag

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer meets today with representatives of the
US government in Washington. He will speak with his US colleague Colin
Powell and with Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. It is the first US
visit of the Foreign Minister since the Iraq war. At that time
German-American relations were heavily strained by the "no" of the German
Government to the war. Therefore Fischer's visit is also an attempt to
better relations. Questions for Hans Ulrich Klose of the SPD,
vice-chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Bundestag.

NDR info.: Mr. Klose, how you judge the current relationship between the
USA and Germany?

Klose: It's beginning to improve. One must add however, the problems
between Europeans and Americans are not only attributable to the attitude
in the Iraq war. The relationship changed after the end of the cold war
and because America, not least due to the experiences in the Kosovo war,
has at least partly lost interest in NATO. The Iraq war brought the debate
to a head.

NDR info.: At that time you violently criticized the chancellor because of
his categorical No to the participation of the German Federal Armed Forces
at the Iraq war. Do you see that differently today?

Klose: No, there I must correct you: I did not criticize the chancellor
because of his No to the war, because I was also not for the war. I
criticized the chancellor because of his diplomatic mistakes, the fact
that he specified his position unilaterally, under the title of "the
German way", and he declared that, "whatever the UN decides, we will not
participate". This political behavior indeed questioned the very
principles of German foreign policy. And that was the core of my
criticism.

NDR info.: Now however the the arguments of US president, which at that
time justified the war, are being disproved. Did he also no make clear
mistakes?

Klose: The Americans made at least as many mistakes as the Europeans. One
can say, the political management around this conflict was deplarably bad
on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the largest American errors consists
of the fact that they did not plausibly state the reasons for their
intervention in Iraq. However, the error of the Europeans lay in the fact
that many of them deliberately minimized the danger posed by Iraq.

NDR info.: The question now is, how can German-American relations become
closer again. Unofficially the USA wish that German German Federal Armed
Forces soldiers would engage themselves in the postwar Iraq. Chancellor
Schroeder rejected this, Fischer also. Was this correct?

Klose: I believe indeed that German soldiers in the Iraq would not be
useful at present, in order to be honest, because one cannot go into such
an deployment without intensive preparation. Successes of the German
soldiers with "nation building" in other parts of the world lay in it that
they were excellently trained, with the right attitude to adjust to
certain situations. One does not create that from today to tomorrow.
Perhaps it would be possible to refer to the civilian component. In Iraq
an entire country is to be developed, from the municipalities to up to the
central level. And there the Germans could bring in specific strengths.
And if it concerns a symbolic military gesture to to be made, surely also
the chancellor and the foreign minister will be willing to discuss it.

NDR info.: They have already said, a symbolic gesture is not enough, in a
country, in which there is so much to be actually done.

Klose: Correct. Therefore it would be better, that each country would
bring in the strengths which they have. The principle must be however that
we, the Germans, we, the Europeans, have no interest that the Americans
faile in Iraq fail and withdraw themselves possibly prematurely. One can
formulate: the greater danger for stability in the Near East is not that
the Americans might remain too long - no, the danger is that that they do
not stay long enough.

NY Times: Springsteen's Homecoming, With 55,000 Guests

2003-07-16T19:07:35+00:00

NY Times: Springsteen's Homecoming, With 55,000 Guests

Netscape is no more

2003-07-16T01:07:19+00:00

Netscape is no more

Linux in Afghanistan

2003-07-15T07:07:08+00:00

Linux in Afghanistan

Noch'n Blogg: Blogg Dir Deine Meinung!

2003-07-14T04:07:18+00:00

Noch'n Blogg: Blogg Dir Deine Meinung!

CalPundit: Bring 'Em On

2003-07-14T04:07:06+00:00

CalPundit: Bring 'Em On

All roads lead...

2003-07-13T15:07:12+00:00

Rather late at our grillfest last weekend, my wife and I impulsively decided to head someplace warm and romantic for our 20th anniversary in September, since our day care provider (under the influence of the California red wine, I'm sure) offered to look after Christopher for that weekend. This would be a second honeymoon, except that we never really had a first honeymoon. Our first thought was Rome, and checking the prices and the flight schedules it looks very good. Now, I've never been to Italy at all, and Mama only once to Verona, so I'll ask my readers. What's essential to see and do (and eat and drink) in Rome for if one is there for 48 hours? No rental car, and no hangovers, please.

Don Park: Blogs will fade away

2003-07-13T05:07:53+00:00

Don Park: Blogs will fade away

hamburg.blogplan.de

2003-07-11T20:07:50+00:00

Thanks to Nico's intern Sven, we bloggers in Hamburg now have a blogplan, where we can track each other by the nearest U/S-Bahn station. Over 50 blogs have been entered.

I actually live quite a ways south of Hittfeld, but Buchholz isn't in the Hamburg transit system (yet). I work at station St. Pauli, my wife's office is near Mundsburg, and our first apartment in Hamburg was exactly halfway between Barmbek and Alter Teichweg.

Sebrenica

2003-07-11T19:07:48+00:00

Godany reminded me that today is the 8th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, and points to a story at Wired on weblogs at The Advocacy Project. Steffanie might be interested in the weblog from Kosovo.

Washington Times: Crash caused Lynch's 'horrific injuries'

2003-07-09T16:07:24+00:00

Washington Times: Crash caused Lynch's 'horrific injuries'

Beyond T9

2003-07-09T14:07:29+00:00

Russell Beattie: Beyond T9

CoulterKampf:

2003-07-08T21:07:03+00:00

CoulterKampf:
The Problem With Ann

Comment Guidelines

2003-07-08T20:07:48+00:00

Comment Guidelines (Stefan Smalla's Info Feed)

Lyssas Lounge now has comments

2003-07-08T19:07:32+00:00

Lyssas Lounge now has comments

Waiting in the Shower

2003-07-08T17:07:40+00:00

A poster advertising 'anti-hangover' shower gel is gracing the city this week. That alone is weird enough to warrant a post, but even stranger is the tagline (with apologies to Alwin): Need help in the morning? The nurse waits in your shower!

Somehow, this makes me think of Psycho....

hamburg.blogplan.de

2003-07-08T17:07:25+00:00

hamburg.blogplan.de

Google News Deutschland

2003-07-08T09:07:40+00:00

Google News Deutschland

One Hand Clapping: My Beta TypePad Blog

2003-07-08T05:07:22+00:00

One Hand Clapping: My Beta TypePad Blog

Stupid White Men and Women

2003-07-08T04:07:55+00:00

Interesting that the current top two entries on the Spiegel non-fiction bestseller list are both American, namely Michael Moore "Stupid White Men" and Hillary Clinton "Living History" (and number 7 is Emmanuel Todd "World Power USA: An Obituary", a book I'm not familiar with but the title seems to say it all). My conclusion: Germans are very interested in reading about the United States, but only to have their prejudices confirmed.

McBusted: McDonald's $1 billion IT sinkhole

2003-07-08T04:07:16+00:00

McBusted: McDonald's $1 billion IT sinkhole

Fourth on the Fifth

2003-07-06T05:07:31+00:00

We were busy all day yesterday hosting our annual German Fourth-of-July grill party. Lately, however, it has not been all that annual. In fact, our last one was in 1998 (it was cold and rainy, and Germany lost to Croatia in the World Cup)Then came pregnancy and baby, and then we were just out of the habit.

This year was also cold and rainy, but were able to stay under the carport in relative comfort. We had twice as much food and drink as we needed, except the California red wine. And we ended up at 1am with a heated 3-way discussion of the German reaction to the Iraq war and conspiracy theories on Möllemann's death (I was listening, not discussing, on both counts). So I guess it was a successful party.

Heise News-Ticker: Postbank und T-Online arbeiten zusammen

2003-07-04T12:07:22+00:00

Heise News-Ticker: Postbank und T-Online arbeiten zusammen

Morphon XML-Editor now free of charge

2003-07-04T11:07:08+00:00

Morphon XML-Editor now free of charge

Format, Install, Repeat

2003-07-04T05:07:37+00:00

I don't do anything serious in Windows, I just use it to play around. So I am rather proud that, without even trying, I managed to screw up my XP installation to the point that it no longer is able to boot (some kernel file is missing or damaged). I think I rebooted while the windows updater was running, or did something else equally as stupid. There's nothing there I really want to keep, so I'll just wipe it out and start again. I should really stick to stable operating systems, though.

Don Park: Filters in News Aggregators

2003-07-04T03:07:59+00:00

Don Park: Filters in News Aggregators

BookNotes: No ban on Autobahn autosex

2003-07-04T03:07:26+00:00

BookNotes: No ban on Autobahn autosex

MandrakeSoft no longer insolvent

2003-07-03T20:07:56+00:00

MandrakeSoft no longer insolvent

2003-07-03T20:07:20+00:00

NDR to cancel Sesame Street after 30 years!?! No, but as of August 4 they will discontinue the afternoon broadcast at 6pm, leaving only the early morning broadcast at 7:30. For families with working parents (like us!), TV in the morning is not an option, and cutting the afternoon broadcast is as good as cancelling the show altogether. Radio Hamburg (a private broadcaster, as opposed to the public NDR) has launched a campaign to save the afternoon broadcast. NDR claims that the Kinderkanal offers an alternative for children, but sorry, it's not Sesame Street, and it's a raw deal for Christopher. And for his parents.

A prototype MT template for N/Echo

2003-07-03T17:07:49+00:00

A prototype MT template for N/Echo, for those of us who are mindless copy-and-paste early adopters

It's going to get ugly. And then it's going to get boring.

2003-07-03T03:07:30+00:00

'It's going to get ugly. And then it's going to get boring.'

Feed on Feeds 3rd most popular aggregator at hebig.org

2003-07-02T21:07:28+00:00

Aggregator stats from hebig.org: SharpReader, NetNewsWire rule them all"

Don't Mention The War!

2003-07-02T20:07:59+00:00

You'd think that comparing a German MEP to a Nazi collaborator simply for being German would be worthy only of a British tabloid or be somethng out of Fawlty Towers. But no, today it occurred in the European Parliament itself, and by none other than the the new European President (and richest man in Italy) Silvio "Take Me To Court and I'll Declare Myself Immune" Berlusconi. And I'd have thought he'd be more in control, like when he hosted the G8 Summit in Genoa.

Tobias Schwarz also comments. As does CalPundit.

Happy Canada Day!

2003-07-01T18:07:28+00:00

Happy Canada Day!

Support Echo! Leave RSS alone!

2003-07-01T07:07:42+00:00

Support Echo! Leave RSS alone!

Brad Choate: Whither MT-Textile 2?

2003-07-01T04:07:53+00:00

Brad Choate: Whither MT-Textile 2?

Squeal

2003-07-01T04:07:50+00:00

So, the tax cut is coming a year earlier, and the Union is sqealing like a pig because, like I said a week ago, it's caught between a rock and its campaign promises of a year ago. Schröder has outfoxed them again. The Union has to say yes, and Schröder will get the credit.

What strikes me about the budget issue is that the discussion is very superficial. Despite allusions in the press to Reagan and Thatcher, noone is asking whether the state can or should continue to do all the things it has done up to now. The government is cutting corners, not programs. The budget tree is being attacked with a nailfile rather than an axe. And noone is mentioning that simplifying the tax system, cutting tax rates and subsidies such that the revenue effect is zero, is in and of itself a good thing, since it makes rational desicions easier. In the economic sense, it allows me to use my time more efficiently to make money and create jobs rather than to find tax loopholes. Sometimes I think that politicians in Germany are missing some basic economic training. I used to teach freshman economics, and thanks to Kurzarbeit I have some time. Give me a call.

What struck my wife was that the picture of the ministers sitting outside in lawn furniture looked just like the midsummer commercial for Ikea, like a tree was just ready to fall on the table and break all the dishes.

Dave Winer: What does "funky" mean?

2003-07-01T03:07:23+00:00

Dave Winer: What does "funky" mean?

It was here a minute ago

2003-06-30T18:06:40+00:00

As seen this afternoon at le sofa blogger, Google News Deutschland (beta), with news in German. Except now the page isn't there. 404. It was there this afternoon, I swear.

Please care about Internationalizition in your applications

2003-06-30T14:06:27+00:00

Hoder: Please care about Internationalizition in your applications

But here I am still dumping mindless crap on the web for no apparent reason

2003-06-30T05:06:42+00:00

blackholebrain: But here I am still dumping mindless crap on the web for no apparent reason

Six Log: Why We Need Echo

2003-06-29T11:06:52+00:00

Six Log: Why We Need Echo

Rainy Day: Length isn't everything

2003-06-29T09:06:41+00:00

Rainy Day: Length isn't everything (on J.K. Rowling)

35 Hours

2003-06-29T06:06:43+00:00

This hasn't been a particularly good year for German unions. First they tried and failed to block Chancellor Schröder's Agenda 2010 within the SPD. And now the IG Metall has called off its strike for the 35 hour work week in the eastern states, which would have harmonized the work week in east and west. This was the first unsuccessful strike for the IG Metall in 49 years.

And last year they were so confident. The new leader of the DGB (National Federation of Labor Unions) Michael Sommer promised a new leftist political course, and his support played a large role in Schröder's re-election. The initial economic program of the new SPD-Green government bore the imprint of the unions. But now reality has set in, and in it is clear the unions had overreached the limits of their political influence. Last week the DGB met with Schröder for the first time since they walked out on him (over Agenda 2010). And now the IG Metall strike has been broken.

Eamonn Fitzgerald discusses some of the reasons this strike failed (and why it was total nonsense to begin with). But it could be more significant as beginning of the end of the Flächentarif, the blanket industry-wide agreements that are the hallmark of German labor. This would mean companies and employees would be able to negotiate more flexible individual agreements rather than adopting a rigid national contract. And unions would be able to truly represent their members in the workplace rather than pursuing national political agendas.

Russell Beattie: Vacation Time (again)

2003-06-28T13:06:09+00:00

Russell Beattie: Vacation Time (again)

Feed on Feeds 0.1.1

2003-06-27T19:06:21+00:00

Steve Minutillo: Feed on Feeds 0.1.1

Vladimir Lenin at KFC

2003-06-26T08:06:47+00:00

blackholebrain: Vladimir Lenin at KFC

Too Funky for Me

2003-06-25T04:06:41+00:00

I hate CSS. And I don't care about RSS.

I'd just like to have an RSS feed that everyone is happy with. (And I'd like to include extra information for my own use, so I can, say, have an RSS file for each entry and archive I publish, and use those files instead of Movable Type templates to generate each web page. But that's futuretalk.)

But after my feed was shamed by Don Park as an example of funky RSS (and he used another f-word several times to express how he feels about funky RSS in general), I decided to defunkify my feed (starting with the template by Alexander Barnes Dryer mentioned by Dave Winer). The result of my effort for now is this template.

Now my head is spinning, a dangerous condition this early in the morning, and I can confirm that thinking about RSS causes severe brain damage. And my feed is only mostly defunkified, because I still have a content:encoded element because, well, I like having all the markup. So I still don't pass the Funkidator.

This still won't make everyone happy. That's why I think Sam Ruby's initiative to create a new common format is a good thing, not because I care about RSS (I don't), but because it will help prevent brain damage.

Update Brad Choate has a template he hopes will pass the 'Dave' test.

The Fire That Time: On the ZDF Documentary 'Feuersturm'

2003-06-24T16:06:12+00:00

The Fire That Time: On the ZDF Documentary 'Feuersturm'

Free As In Beer

2003-06-24T05:06:43+00:00

Re: USS Clueless - Free ain't cheap (originally mailed to Steven Den Beste, so the 'you' refers to him).

The Movable Type flap seems to be over, but that won't stop me from commenting on it.

I'm a happy user of both Movable Type (for my blog) and CityDesk (for pro-bono work), and have paid for them both. I disagree that the licenses are all that different. Movable Type has _never_ been a free program. You've always had to pay for commercial use. The problem in this case is how to define 'commercial use'... at what point is setting up MT for a private user 'commerical use'? Likewise, a license for CityDesk does not give one the right the set up the program for another user... one has to get an additional license.

Coming from the Linux and free software communinty, maybe I'm more accustomed to reading licences carefully and the type of license offered for Movable Type. We differentiate between 'free as in beer' and 'free as in speech', and it's always been clear to me that MT is only 'free as in beer'. Just like the free version of CityDesk. Perhaps it's confusing because MT is a Perl script in clear text, that one can look at and change.

Six Apart cannot 'pull the rug out from under' MT users, even if they wanted to. Once you have agreed to the license and have obtained a certain version of the software, Six Apart cannot change it for that software that you already have. For example, they could decide to today that MT 2.64 and higher are no longer free for personal use. Everyone that already has MT 2.64 would not (and could not) be bound by the change. The change would only apply to all future users, and present users who wanted to update to the new version. (Fog Creek could do the same thing to CityDesk users. If they were to, say, increase the price by a factor of 10 and charge that price for all upgrades to 2.0, you could still continue to use 1.0.31 for the price you already paid.)

Anyway, it looks like the people at Six Apart are being as reasonable as they can be without compromising their business.

Deeds instead of words

2003-06-24T04:06:49+00:00

Rainy Day: Deeds instead of words

Baghdad Bulletin - Independent news from Iraq

2003-06-23T15:06:49+00:00

Baghdad Bulletin - Independent news from Iraq

Internet For Poets: DNS

2003-06-23T15:06:29+00:00

Burningbird: Internet For Poets: DNS

Cacophony

2003-06-23T03:06:49+00:00

Four months ago it looked like Chancellor Schröder was on the ropes, and would soon be down and out. The economy and the budget were in ruins, he was battered in local elections, he had a vocal but pointless policy on Iraq, he was caught between election promises and political realities, he faced dissent in his own ranks and a united opposition fully in charge of the Bundesrat.

These days it all looks different. Actually, all of those conditions still hold, except now it's the Union that is in tatters, not the SPD. An editorial (in German) in Saturday's Abendblatt describes the cacophony (a word Schröder was using 4 months ago to chastise his own party) in the Union.

A couple of examples: This past week the Merkel and Stoiber did an end-run around their own health care expert Seehofer to present a most unsocial health care plan (co-payments for everything! for everybody!). The loyal Seehofer nearly resigned, and the Bundestag debate took place without him. This coming week the cabinet will be considering moving up a planned tax cut, to be financed by cutting subsidies. The mantra of the Union for the past 2 years has been cutting taxes and subsidies, but now that it looks like Schröder is going to do it, the leading figures in the Union are rushing to protect their favorite barrels of pork (tax credit for commuters! subsidies for house buyers!). Bavaria has local elections in a couple of months, and it seems the Union will be frozen in the headlights until then.

There's nothing like a little policy-making responsibility (the firm Bundesrat majority) to show how much, or in this case, how little backbone an opposition has. The moderate Merkel, the conservative Koch, and the odd-man-out Stoiber are doing a strange dance to work out who is really in charge of the Union. It looks like the music will be playing until 2006, the next national elections, if not longer, and the only one smiling is Schröder.

Baseball on its ear

2003-06-22T12:06:09+00:00

Instapundit points to a Matt Welch article on Turning baseball on its ear, how the the unconventional Bill James method of looking at statistics (bases, runs and wins instead of hits) is making its mark on professional baseball. InstaPundit compares the 'Jamesian' movement to weblogging. In the '80s I was a religious reader of Bill James' Abstracts, and participated in Project Scorecard (mentioned in the article). I still remember that it takes 5 runs to win a game. And I hear Bill James now works for the Red Sox.

Saddam's Homepage Gets Face Lift

2003-06-21T19:06:49+00:00

Wired News: Saddam's Homepage Gets Face Lift

Wieviel sind eigentlich 60 GByte ??

2003-06-20T12:06:39+00:00

Wieviel sind eigentlich 60 GByte ??

SitePoint : Storing Hierarchical Data in a Database

2003-06-20T07:06:16+00:00

SitePoint : Storing Hierarchical Data in a Database

Editors' Gaffes, Readers' Gripes Are Ombudsman Gelfand's Grist

2003-06-20T06:06:38+00:00

Editors' Gaffes, Readers' Gripes Are Ombudsman Gelfand's Grist

That's me

2003-06-20T05:06:41+00:00

I told you I'd be in the back row.

Am I picking my nose in this picture?

Do it yourself

2003-06-19T11:06:04+00:00

Advertising for an auto junkyard seen on a garbage truck near the Reeperbahn in Hamburg.

A positive German link from Instapundit

2003-06-19T04:06:54+00:00

A positive German link from Instapundit

Funkidator

2003-06-18T08:06:43+00:00

Funkidator

Winds of Change 404 Page

2003-06-18T06:06:26+00:00

Winds of Change 404 Page

Personal memories of the strike leader Karl-Heinz Pahling

2003-06-18T03:06:42+00:00

June 17th, 1953 - Personal memories of the strike leader Karl-Heinz Pahling

Heros without Glory

2003-06-18T02:06:40+00:00

Helden ohne Ruhm is a fascinating documentary of the 1953 uprising shown in ARD last night. It features interviews with demonstrators, VoPos, Soviet soldiers, and widows. It's being rerun tonight (RBB) and tomorrow (SWR) if you missed it. The photo is from newly discovered footage from Leipzig. The girl holding the sign was imprisoned until 1962.

What We Think About When We Think About Germany

2003-06-17T20:06:48+00:00

What We Think About When We Think About Germany

1953: Workers' Uprising in East Berlin

2003-06-17T19:06:19+00:00

I've been adding some reports on the anniversary to my Quick Links. Haiko Hebig has some photos, even if you can't read his German text.

June 17, 1953 is a date that the powers in both East and West would have rather forgotten. In the East, of course, since it showed that the East German state had no standing without Soviet tanks to back it up, and in the West, since it showed that it lacked the ability, the will, and the courage to roll back the Iron Curtain. As the tanks opened fire, the protesters were on their own, just as they would be later in Budapest, in Prague, and in Gdansk. JFK and Ronald Reagan would shake their fists at the Wall, but could do little else.

I can't help but think that today, as some in the US are making plans to bring peace and democracy to Iraq and the entire Middle East, whether they again are making promises that they will not have the ability, the will, and the courage to fulfill.

Update Here are the Quick Links I collected on the uprising:

The day Germans took to the streets

2003-06-17T18:06:39+00:00

The day Germans took to the streets

East Berlin June 17, 1953: Stones Against Tanks

2003-06-17T18:06:05+00:00

East Berlin June 17, 1953: Stones Against Tanks

50th anniversary of GDR uprising

2003-06-17T07:06:21+00:00

50th anniversary of GDR uprising

McDonald's sets 'I'm Lovin' It' global ad campaign

2003-06-17T06:06:40+00:00

McDonald's sets 'I'm Lovin' It' global ad campaign

Desktop of Evil

2003-06-17T04:06:06+00:00

Mama's PC is getting a long-needed software update, a nice fresh Windows 2000 Pro. Yes, anyone named Voldemort must be using Windows 2000. We finished the chicken-and-egg driver phase (i.e. you need a network driver to connect to the Internet, but to get the driver you need to be on the Internet) and the 30MB-of-security-updates phase. We still need to find the printer and audio drivers, install her aps, and make the desktop pretty.

I'd love to give her Linux, but her job as Voldemort requires that she work with tools of the devil like Word documents and Excel sheets. And she doesn't feel like learning a 2nd OS, and I don't blame her.

Linux ist pleite

2003-06-16T09:06:23+00:00

Linux ist pleite (translation)

Garton Ash on Europe and America

2003-06-16T05:06:25+00:00

Rainy Day: Garton Ash on Europe and America

Garden Party

2003-06-15T12:06:02+00:00

As part of the celebrations of Voldemort's birthday, today we are holding the semi-formal garden party for the relatives (mit Erbtante). Reception with glass of Frexinet at 3pm, coffee and cake at 4pm, light snack at 5:30pm, and hopefully by 6:30pm they get the idea it's time to leave. Tip for hosting such an event: open the first bottle of Frexinet at noon. The perspective is then much brighter.

Everything changes. Everything.

2003-06-14T11:06:55+00:00

Talking Points Memo: Everything changes. Everything.

San Francisco Treat

2003-06-14T05:06:14+00:00

Sam Ruby: San Francisco Treat

German Men

2003-06-13T10:06:16+00:00

How to Find a Man in Europe and Leave Him There: German Men

Der Boss rockt, das Stadion tobt

2003-06-13T07:06:29+00:00

Abendblatt: 40 000 Fans feierten Bruce Springsteen in der AOL-Arena

Springsteen Set List and Concert Reviews - 6/12/2003 Hamburg

2003-06-13T04:06:49+00:00

Springsteen Set List and Concert Reviews - 6/12/2003 Hamburg

Springsteen Set List and Concert Reviews - 6/10/2003 Munich

2003-06-12T13:06:04+00:00

Springsteen Set List and Concert Reviews - 6/10/2003 Munich

Using bookmarklets to experiment with CSS

2003-06-12T02:06:25+00:00

Simon Willison: Using bookmarklets to experiment with CSS

American Bloggers are old. European Bloggers are young.

2003-06-12T01:06:48+00:00

American Bloggers are old. European Bloggers are young.

Gored by Longhorn

2003-06-11T19:06:55+00:00

Zeldman: Gored by Longhorn - 2005? Are they kidding?

Voldemort's Birthday

2003-06-11T18:06:30+00:00

I no longer mention my wife here by name (except as Voldemort, as in she-who-must-not-be-named), but today is her birthday. A very round birthday, as they say in German (meaning it ends with a zero, and in this case, begins with a four), so it is a very special day indeed. Now we've long since decided that giving one another presents is somewhat, well, albern, er, I mean, inane, absurd, daft. After all, we've had a combined bank account for 20 years, so like I'm going to spend her money to buy her something I think she might want. Inane. Absurd. Daft.

I did have to explain to some of her employees, who called me asking for advice, what I think she might want ('well, she likes gardening, she likes reading mysteries by female authors'... as you can see in the picture, they followed my advice), and I didn't think I could simply ignore her very special round birthday. There's always jewelry, you might say, but my taste is nowhere near as good as hers, and I think we'll save the jewelry for the 20-year anniversary coming up this fall. But that is still spending her money to buy her something that I think she might like. Inane, absurd... well, you get the idea.

Then, on our bicycle ride this weekend, I noticed that her bicycle is no longer that new. And she has mentioned a couple of times this year that she would like a new one. She can of course choose her own model and color, but I could take the time and trouble to organize the purchase of a bicycle. So I found a carton about the size of a jewelry box, pasted several bicycle pictures on the inside, folded, sealed and wrapped it.

I think it was a good idea, as she proudly explained to her nephew on the phone that she got a bicycle for her birthday. And tomorrow we'll be going to see Bruce Springsteen here in Hamburg, and that will make us feel 20 years younger. And that's not at all inane, absurd, or daft.

2003-06-11T10:06:49+00:00

Was von Jörg Haider bleibt

Friday's bomb in Dresden

2003-06-11T04:06:28+00:00

Marstonalia: Friday's bomb in Dresden

Leapfrog's Great Leap Forward

2003-06-10T09:06:32+00:00

Fast Company: Leapfrog's Great Leap Forward

Capsized

2003-06-09T18:06:48+00:00

After torrential rainstorms yesterday, we had wonderful weather today for the Pentecost holiday, and we decided to take in it on the Alster lake in Hamburg. Mama wanted to drop in unannounced at a couple of her Hamburg locations... I'm sure they loved having a surprise visit from the boss on a holiday. But once business was taken care of, we took Christopher on an Alster cruise. There was of course the usual commentary on the shoreline real estate (there's the Otto villa, there's the Senate Guest House where the Queen of England stayed, over there is the Tchibo mansion). But just as the captain was telling us about sailing on the Alster (a permit is not required, but you need to leave a €30 deposit in case you capsize), a sailboat did in fact capsize, right in front of our boatload of tourists. The 3 boaters were not able to able to right the boat by themselves, so we circled around and gave them a boost. The mast was broken, so that was the end of their day, and after being rescued by a tour ship, most likely the end of their dignity as well.

Right now, Christopher is in the bathtub reenacting the incident.

Why do the Brits call holidays 'bank holidays'?

2003-06-09T18:06:26+00:00

Why do the Brits call holidays 'bank holidays'?

2003-06-09T06:06:39+00:00

At least twice when browsing through German online news sites, I've run into the following banner ad for Schröder's reform package 'Agenda 2010':

The link goes to the official government web site (English). Now, I know the line between partisan politics and government in a parliamentary democracy is rather fuzzy, and it's not like, say, Schröder is sending the Bundesgrenzschutz to round up opposition state legislators for a quorum call. But it's still a little strange to see the government spending tax money to advertise for itself.

Then again, I guess the White House web site isn't that much different.

Universe of the Illegal Alien

2003-06-09T05:06:52+00:00

The Universe of the Illegal Alien

Welcome

2003-06-08T20:06:01+00:00

I'm not sure why, but I've seen little attention paid to this weekend's Polish referendum on EU membership. Maybe it was because of the the holiday weekend here in Germany, or that the result already seemed certain. Indeed, well over 80% did vote yes, and turnout was over 50% so that the vote is binding.

There is a nice (but for subscribers only) summary in this week's Economist of why Poland is quite important. Poland is by far the largest of the 10 new member states and will be the 5th largest member, thus speaking for the other new members and playing a leading role in shaping the new EU. That role will very likely be pro-agriculture (as in subsidies) and pro-US.

Meanwhile Germans will have to get over the stereotype that the Poles want to steal their jobs, just as the Poles have to get over the stereotype that the Germans want to steal their land. Back in 2000 I posted a little story of German-Polish friendship from my wife's family. Maybe it can be a parable of how Germans and Poles can get along with their old-new neighbor on the Oder.

Poles Vote 'Yes' to EU; Turnout Clears Target

2003-06-08T18:06:33+00:00

Reuters: Poles Vote 'Yes' to EU; Turnout Clears Target

Blogspot Jihad

2003-06-08T08:06:30+00:00

Blogspot Jihad: an offer for Blogspot users to switch to Movable Type

Lost Honor

2003-06-07T07:06:38+00:00

Interestingly, yesterday I noticed two completely unrelated posts mentioning "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" at Marstonalia and logblogwhatever. Brett's post was on how the film has lessons for the US today on dealing with terrorism, Steffanie's post was in Swedish, but I suspect she's reading the book by Heinrich Böll in the original German.

Black blogs

2003-06-06T21:06:29+00:00

Maria Milonas: Black blogs

Feed on feeds

2003-06-06T19:06:59+00:00

On Monday I posted a quick link to feed on feeds, a server-side RSS aggregator for PHP and MySQL by Steve Minutillo. Last fall I wrote that I wanted an AmphetaServer instead of an AmphetaDesk. This looks it could be it. I've been using feed on feeds all week now, and I love it.

It's at version 0.1, and it looks and feels very clunky. I can think of a dozen ways to make it easier to use. It chokes on invalid XML. The layout is ugly. But the main thing is, it works. It gathers over 100 RSS feeds for me, which I can read and maintain from any browser, at home, at work, anywhere. It's now available at SourceForge, and I look forward to watching, and maybe even helping, it develop.

Nico saw the link as well, and feels pretty much the same way.

Jews flooding into Germany

2003-06-06T19:06:43+00:00

via Blogeline: UPI: Jews flooding into Germany

All right, give me just a second to strap it on

2003-06-06T18:06:28+00:00

AccordionGuy: All right, give me just a second to strap it on

I'll get the hang of this whole parenting thing just yet..

2003-06-06T14:06:41+00:00

the working mom: I'll get the hang of this whole parenting thing just yet...

$125 a piece for murder

2003-06-06T14:06:16+00:00

paradox1x: $125 a piece for murder

4 oh 4

2003-06-06T11:06:38+00:00

via From The Orient: Aquarionics: 4 oh 4

Guardian corrects Wolfowitz 'sea of oil' article

2003-06-06T06:06:25+00:00

The Guardian corrects Wolfowitz 'sea of oil' article

2003-06-05T11:06:41+00:00

As noted by Nico, police have just announced that the ex FDP vice-chair Jürgen W. Möllemann was killed while parachuting. Suicide is strongly suspected, as today police carried out several search warrants related to investigations of Möllemann's finances and the Bundestag revoked his parlimentary immunity.

See Stefan Sharkansky's Jürgen W. Möllemann File for background on the controversial German politician.

DW World: Controversial Politician Dies in Parachuting Accident

2003-06-05T07:06:59+00:00

Godany: Ich hab noch so einen alten, grünen Ösi-Reisepass.

Needles in Haystacks

2003-06-05T06:06:30+00:00

Eamonn Fitzgerald: Needles in Haystacks

the Internet, weblogs, Iraq, and freedom

2003-06-03T08:06:15+00:00

BuzzMachine: A plan: the Internet, weblogs, Iraq, and freedom

Comfort Zone

2003-06-02T21:06:41+00:00

Wonderful weather today. Sunny with light clouds, slight breeze, 28°C (83°F). But most folks around here are complaining that it's too hot. One could think that Germans just always like to complain about the weather. I'm more polite and say that they have a narrow comfort zone. (I will admit, though, that most buildings here are not designed for maximum comfort in warm weather.)

Hot, by the way, begins at 40°C.

Blog! Huh! What Is It Good For?

2003-06-02T10:06:54+00:00

Shamrockshire Eagle: Blog! Huh! What Is It Good For?

feed on feeds

2003-06-02T09:06:44+00:00

via Mathemagenic: feed on feeds - server side rss aggregator (php/mysql)

Warsaw Voice

2003-06-01T18:06:31+00:00

Warsaw Voice

Internet Explorer 7.0

2003-06-01T17:06:16+00:00

Joel on Software: Internet Explorer 7.0

A David-English Dictionary

2003-06-01T17:06:11+00:00

Shark Blog: A David-English Dictionary

2003-05-31T19:05:55+00:00

Perfect weather today on the Baltic coast. After going to the beach and the harbor, Christopher and I left Mama in Eckernförde for her class reunion and took the train back home. We're back home, but exhausted.

Transcript of Wolfowitz Interview with Vanity Fair

2003-05-31T19:05:23+00:00

DoD News: Transcript of Wolfowitz Interview with Vanity Fair

Stupid, stupid, stupid idiots!

2003-05-31T06:05:14+00:00

Almost a diary: Stupid, stupid, stupid idiots!

Jason's rules for the NYC subway

2003-05-30T20:05:02+00:00

kottke.org: Jason's rules for the NYC subway

Bridge Day

2003-05-30T19:05:21+00:00

It was a mistake going to work today, after the Ascension holiday yesterday. I should have taken the day off like most people. The office wasn't just empty, but seeped in a mood of doom and gloom, as next week we start on reduced time... 'Kurzarbeit'. My department will be working at 80% across the board, which we all find fair, and works out nicely to a 4 day work week. Other departments are harder hit, with some people being cut down to 0%. Those people are certainly wondering if they will ever come back, and if the entire deal was just a way for the firm to get rid of them without a formal termination of employment.

No, I should have taken today off. Then maybe I could have had as much fun as I did yesterday, when I took Christopher to the zoo and saw the baby elephant, or tomorrow, when we all will head to the beach on the Baltic Sea (Mama has a class reuinion, Christopher and I will come home by train). Or on Monday, when I will take my first 'short day' home with Christopher (his day care and the substitute are both on vacation). All of those are much happier prospects than work.

Blogging in German

2003-05-30T07:05:09+00:00

As an experiment I've reactivated my old antville weblog to do some posting in German. I imagine that my posts there will be a lot different than what I post here, since I won't have to write a paragraph of background information for a 4 word punch line.

I met my wife on-line...

2003-05-29T18:05:21+00:00

'I met my wife on-line. She told me she was 14. I told her I was rich.'

CSS is not rocket science

2003-05-29T07:05:35+00:00

ongoing : CSS is not rocket science

2003-05-29T03:05:32+00:00

Abendblatt: Gönnen wir's dem Papa

Fire at Hosting Matters

2003-05-28T18:05:29+00:00

Code the Web Socket: Fire at Hosting Matters

Blogs Opening Iranian Society?

2003-05-28T11:05:54+00:00

Wired News: Blogs Opening Iranian Society?

Pick One of Three

2003-05-28T06:05:12+00:00

steffanie has the answer for overcoming language barriers in weblogging. Simply learn another language... and blog in it!. She's Swedish, and she's blogging in Swedish, English and German. So maybe she'll now learn Polish as well?

Mostly Useless

2003-05-28T03:05:04+00:00

I've nevered considered myself to be a 'serious' weblogger, and have never really considered weblogging to be a 'serious' activity. It's just a hobby... it's fun, I've met some great people online, I've had some good (and some not so good) discussions, and it's a easy way to post baby pictures. But it's message, not the medium that interests me (or, in modern jargon, the content, not the delivery system). The technology isn't particularly important. I was doing the same kind of thing in high school with a typewriter and a mimeograph machine. These days you don't have to get ink or toner on your hands.

So I was certainly a bit apprehensive last week about heading for a 'serious' conference on weblogs and weblogging, full of presentations on research on weblogs, weblogs in business, and a strange discipline called 'knowledge management'. So when the presentations began with heavy theory of the 'semantic web', my fears were nearly justified (although they did respond politely to my question about semantic methods deal with dynamic humans).

However, the very next round of presentations turned the conference around for me, when Hossein and Maria told about how weblogs are affecting real people in Iran and Poland. How the main themes in Iranian weblogs are not politics, but sex and loneliness. How teenagers are the main age group of webloggers in Poland.

These communities, these stories were new to me, and it was very exciting to me. I'm looking forward to learning more about them, especially Poland, since they are my neighbors, soon to by my fellow citizens, yet Poland is mentioned so little in the German media (except in Harald Schmidt monolouges). And I'm wondering how we can overcome the barrier of language in bringing together international communities on the web. (Ironically, at the conference I got an email from a provider of translation services who asked if weblogs could be a marketing opportunity. Yes, yes, yes!)

The other highlight was getting to know some of these 'serious' people and finding them to be very personable. They may be weblogging for their work, but they are having fun with their weblogs as well. Even if all the knowledge management in the world can not help you find cake in downtown Vienna at 1 am.

So, like Ford Prefect writing about the Earth for the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I'm going to have to update my personal definition of weblogs from 'useless'. They are now 'mostly useless'. And if 'serious' webloggers can enable conferences to take place where so much socializing can take place, then I guess that's OK. I'll be at the next one.

Please Don't Not Smoke

2003-05-27T20:05:13+00:00

To follow up on Smoking for Health Care, it's being reported today that the proposed €1 cigarette tax will not be imposed all at once on January 1, but will instead be introduced in stages of 40, 30 and 30 cents. The government otherwise fears a drastic drop in cigarette use and an impact on expected revenue from the new tax.

That's refreshing honesty, albeit a bit cynical. The government would rather have smokers die than quit. Just make sure you buy a few cartons extra before you go.

City of Munich migrates from NT to Linux

2003-05-27T18:05:01+00:00

vowe.net: City of Munich to migrate from NT to Linux clients

Blog Cred since August 1999

2003-05-27T16:05:10+00:00

A number of folks (well, ok, two) at BlogTalk referred to me as a German blogging pioneer. It made me feel old, but it did earn me a number (two) of beers. My blog cred may not go back as far as that of Rebecca Blood (April 1999), who gave a keynote in Vienna, but I did try out Blogger for a few weeks later that summer. And, surprise, surprise, the Maus Newsletter is still in the Blogger database. Just for fun, I decided to publish it (slightly edited for spousal privacy).

This is not actually the first time I've rediscovered my old Blogger page, though. I guess I have the right to dig it up evey 2 years.

2003-05-27T15:05:21+00:00

Netzeitung: Der Blog-Hype ist nicht übertrieben

Euro hits all-time high

2003-05-27T13:05:10+00:00

BBC: Euro hits all-time high: $1.1914

Conferencing in a time of connectivity

2003-05-27T07:05:00+00:00

Rainy Day: Conferencing in a time of connectivity

hebig and hebig

2003-05-27T06:05:40+00:00

hebig and
hebig

Wenn die Mutter mit dem Sohn

2003-05-26T16:05:33+00:00

Lyssas Lounge: Wenn die Mutter mit dem Sohn

MoPho

2003-05-25T17:05:36+00:00

I'm not sure if posting photos from a cell phone can be considered quick or easy, or even sensible, but it is at least possible.

Don't blog me, I'm real!

2003-05-25T13:05:05+00:00

Marysia Cywinska-Milonas: Don't blog me, I'm real!

[BlogTalk] Updated List of Conference Bloggers

2003-05-24T10:05:29+00:00

Joho the Blog: BlogTalk List of Conference Bloggers

Drugstore of Hope

2003-05-24T09:05:42+00:00

Pictures from Vienna by Nico at Noch'n Blogg.

Waging Peace

2003-05-24T08:05:16+00:00

Saturday in Vienna... a beautiful sunny morning, and we're sitting in a dark hall with our notebooks. The title of Rebecca Blood's keynote, Waging Peace: Using Our Powers for Good, sounded boring but her point was actually pretty interesting: that we tend to fill our blogrolls with blogs that think and write like we do. She then gave two examples of blogs that go beyond that, that attempt to bring together two sides of long-running conflicts for constructive dialog: Slugger O'Toole (Northern Ireland) and DialogNow (India/Pakistan).

I've always tried to put a wide range of opinions in my blogroll (which is not just for show, it's what I actually read), but I've never taken it beyond that. What are the prerequsites for establishing such a dialog? A passion for the issue and resolving the conflict, of course, what what else? Cross-cultural experience? Being bilingual (when language plays a role)? Or is it just being able to see beyond the box?

Blogging Around the World

2003-05-23T12:05:02+00:00

The second set of presentations is somewhat more relevant and interesting. Presentators from Iran, Poland, and Spain are explaining about the role of blogs in their countries, which are more social, communicative, and friendly than the world the technologists were talking about this morning. I know which world I'd rather be a part of.

Sitting In The Back Row

2003-05-23T10:05:27+00:00

As promised, I'm in the back row at BlogTalk, wearing my dead fish cap, next to a power outlet so I can fire up my little ThinkPad. And the WiFi seems to work.

I'm skeptical of most of the points brought up by the panelists so far. How can bloggers internationally maintain any sort of meaningful dialouge given the wide cultural and language differences? How can any kind of semantic markup keep up with the dynamic interests and specialties of the people who write the blogs? And why don't they have any coffee at this conference center?

By the way, both Heiko and Haiko are pronounced HIGH-ko, but they are easy to tell apart. Heiko is the one who can't read the map, and Haiko is the one who ~~can't find~~ never uses the brakes.

Off to Vienna

2003-05-22T15:05:57+00:00

So I'm off to Vienna. I've never used my wireless network card away from home, so if I don't post again until Sunday, you'll know I didn't get it work. I'll be flying with Heiko, and I hear that Haiko is picking us up... that's HIGH-ko and HEY-ko, and I hope I don't get confused.

If you're looking for me at the conference, I'll be the one wearing the blue cap with the dead fish who's not paying very much attention to the presentations.

Horst Prillinger: U-Bahn Wien

2003-05-22T11:05:27+00:00

Horst Prillinger: U-Bahn Wien - Subway Vienna

SMS Server Tools

2003-05-22T10:05:18+00:00

SMS Server Tools

Matrix XP: The trailer

2003-05-22T09:05:12+00:00

Matrix XP: the trailer

TypePad News: Some Frequently Asked Questions

2003-05-22T08:05:43+00:00

TypePad News: Some Frequently Asked Questions

Does this thing work?

2003-05-22T08:05:11+00:00

Does this thing work?

---This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net.

Eat Me

2003-05-21T20:05:37+00:00

The Bird Goes to Work

2003-05-21T15:05:02+00:00

The Bird goes to work

Twenty Percent

2003-05-21T04:05:31+00:00

At work, it looks like things might be coming together for reduced hours starting June 1. The proposal for our department is an across-the-board 20% reduction. That means we can work 4 day weeks, or work 2 half-days and 3 full-days or whatever. The state (un)employment office will cover 60% of lost wages for 6 months. That's a solution that's fair and that I can live with, although I don't really have any confidence that things will be better in 6 months, either with my present employer or the job market in general.

Meanwhile, my new Nokia 3650 cell phone arrived last night, and Mama had what she called 'car pornography' (brochures for the new BMW 5 series), so we each had our entertainment last night after Christopher was asleep.

Et tu, Bavaria?

2003-05-21T03:05:49+00:00

pseudoco.de: Et tu, Bavaria?

Faux Pax Americana

2003-05-21T03:05:45+00:00

Faux Pax Americana

Hidden Primary DNS Server

2003-05-20T11:05:42+00:00

Cricket's DNS Corner: A hidden primary master name server

Thyssen buys back Iran shares

2003-05-20T09:05:07+00:00

Thyssen buys back Iran shares

Aggreg8: an RSS aggregator for Mozilla

2003-05-19T18:05:05+00:00

via hebig.com: Aggreg8: an RSS aggregator for Mozilla

No More Cocoon for Me

2003-05-19T16:05:10+00:00

Russell Beattie Notebook: No More Cocoon for Me

Salam Pax interview, German

2003-05-19T12:05:08+00:00

Salam Pax interview, German

2003-05-19T12:05:04+00:00

Der Schockwellenreiter: Merkel fordert längere Arbeitszeit

Salam Pax interview, English

2003-05-19T12:05:02+00:00

Salam Pax interview, English

Firebird

2003-05-19T11:05:39+00:00

Mozilla Firebird 0.6 (the browser formerly known as Phoenix)

MT hacks: Edit this post - right now!

2003-05-19T04:05:17+00:00

scriptygoddess: MT hacks: Edit this post - right now!

Regex Coach - interactive regular expressions

2003-05-19T04:05:03+00:00

via hebig.org: Regex Coach - interactive regular expressions

Converting entry dates to UTC

2003-05-18T04:05:55+00:00

Scriptygoddess: MT hacks: Converting entry dates to UTC

Trinity hacks with nmap in Matrix Reloaded

2003-05-18T04:05:04+00:00

via anil dash: Trinity hacks with nmap in Matrix Reloaded

Texas Democratic Legislator Playing Cards

2003-05-17T21:05:47+00:00

Texas Democratic Legislator Playing Cards

MT, Time Zones, DST, and RSS

2003-05-17T12:05:10+00:00

I'm planning to archive my quick links as RSS files and use the Magpie or Onyx PHP libraries to add them to my montly archives. While preparing the files, I was reminded that Movable Type has no concept of daylight savings time. The date and time of the entry is saved in local time, without any indication of time zone or daylight savings time.

You can set a time zone for a blog, but it's just a number between -12 and 12, and is a global preference. It seems only to set the MTBlogTimezone variable, which gets tacked onto the dc:date field in the RSS template. If you go onto daylight savings time, the dc:dates will be off by an hour until you adjust your timezone. And in the fall you have to set it back.

This may not really make any difference when generating web pages, when I want to display local time anyway, but it does make a difference to me when I archive entries to RSS files. There I'd just as soon save the dc:time as UTC, which never springs ahead or falls back. Then when I display the file, I can convert to whatever time zone I want.

So I installed Brad Choate's PerlScript Plugin. Then I can use a couple of lines of perl to convert MT date and time to UTC and print it out as a ISO 8601 string fit for the dc:date field. I could probably make this into a plugin for MT as well. But this is a lot more trouble than it needs to be. MT should be able to keep track of time zones and daylight saving time on its own.

<dc:date><MTPerlScript> use Time::Local; my $mytime = timelocal(<$MTEntryDate format= "('%S', '%M', '%H', '%e', '%m'-1, '%Y'-1900)"$>); my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year, $wday,$yday,$isdst)=gmtime($mytime); printf('%d-%02d-%02dT%02d:%02d:%02dZ', $year+1900,$mon+1,$mday,$hour,$min,$sec); </MTPerlScript></dc:date>

Petition for Celtic v St. Pauli benefit match

2003-05-16T16:05:18+00:00

Heiko Hebig: Petition for Celtic v St. Pauli benefit match

Helmut Kohl and Panorama

2003-05-16T16:05:16+00:00

Ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl always had a, ah, 'special' relationship with journalists from the ARD network. He hated them, and they hated him back. So Dr. Kohl was not particularly cooperative when the ARD magazine Panorama wanted to ask him about his DM100,000+ consulting contract with the private broadcaster (now bankrupt) Leo Kirch. But the 'interview' could be a lesson to politicians everywhere in dealing with pesky reporters...

ARD Panorama: Herr Dr. Kohl, good day. Stuchlik, Panorama, one question. Why did you receive money from Mr. Kirch?
Dr. Helmut Kohl: I have absolutely no intention of giving you an interview.
Panorama: Why not?
Kohl: You are from Panorama?
Panorama: Yes.
Kohl: That means you have nothing to do with journalism.
Panorama: But why did you receive...?
Kohl: Oh, man, that's enough.
Panorama: For what services did you receive the money?
Kohl: That I look at your face, and that's enough for me.
Panorama: I ask once again: Why did you receive money from Mr. Kirch?
Kohl: I can tell you this. I am collecting money to finance an investigation of the liars and traitors of German unity, in connection with certain activities of the ARD.
Panorama: That means you are accusing us of betraying our country?
Kohl: Parts of the ARD and the activities of especially your program over the years. I wanted to tell you this, and you can broadcast it live. Of course I'm accusing some of you of treason, there's no other word for it.

Lesson learned: when in doubt, accuse the press of treason! I missed the broadcast, but laughed long, hard and loud when I heard it on the radio. Excerpt from Industrial Technology & Witchcraft.

Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'

2003-05-16T12:05:15+00:00

via Dave's Picks: BBC: Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'

Why did German-Americans forget German?

2003-05-15T21:05:24+00:00

Tobias Schwarz: Why did German-Americans forget German, while Hispanic-American still speak Spanish?

Traumwind will be an LP

2003-05-15T08:05:19+00:00

In 4 months Traumwind will be an LP

U.S. to shut down four army bases in Hesse

2003-05-15T07:05:03+00:00

FAZ: U.S. to shut down four army bases in Hesse

German GDP down 0.2% in Q1 2003

2003-05-15T07:05:00+00:00

BBC: German GDP down 0.2% in Q1 2003

Salam Pax Interview In Austria

2003-05-15T06:05:08+00:00

With all the fuss yesterday about Salam Pax being a Baathist stooge, I'm surprised noone noted the report from Industrial Technology & Witchcraft that an email interview with Mr. Pax will appear Friday in the Austrian magazin 'Formil' (er, I mean Format). But since those posts were in German, it must be that language barrier thing.

Update: Jacqueline Godany has now posted an authorized excerpt (in German) of the interview. And Jeff Jarvis has translated into English.

Anon or Non-Anon

2003-05-14T20:05:50+00:00

One interesting topic that came up at our BlogMeet on Sunday was whether to blog under your real name or not. The diarists Lyssa and Martina make themselves known by first name only, and thus feel more comfortable posting more personal thoughts.

One conclusion we came to was that "it's different for girls", that women are more likely to run into harassment or stalkers than are men. (Does this mean that more psychopaths are male rather than female? I don't think so, but I think the female psychopaths are likely to be more subtle.)

But afterwards, I got to thinking that it's not really an either-or question. Even if you post anonymously, you still bare your soul. And if you post under your real name, you still wear a mask. In any sort of personal website, you both reveal a good deal of yourself and at the same time create a persona which may be quite than your true person (what- or whoever that may be).

And certainly posting our thoughts goes hand in hand with our interest in reading the thoughts of others. Writing on the web is a two-way street... we want to read and write. In our web browsers, we are still social animals, hoping to catch a glimpse behind someone's mask, even as we try to stay hidden behind our own.

(And I think that Lyssa's and Shelley's photos have a lot more in common with one another than either does with that of Audrey Hepburn.)

T-Mobile USA: Nokia 3650 for $199

2003-05-14T19:05:10+00:00

T-Mobile USA: Nokia 3650 for $199, plan costs $40/month

What I Hate About Your Programming Language

2003-05-14T10:05:08+00:00

ONLamp.com: What I Hate About Your Programming Language

Iraqi WMD: not wrong. Yet

2003-05-14T05:05:26+00:00

newsrack: Iraqi WMD: not wrong. Yet

Just A Smile Before I Sleep

2003-05-14T04:05:43+00:00

Christopher says this picture is for Grandpa.

Troopers Find Texas House Dems in Okla

2003-05-13T18:05:55+00:00

via Marstonalia and BookNotes:
Troopers Find Texas House Dems in Okla.

Aaron's RSS to Email Aggregator

2003-05-13T18:05:49+00:00

Aaron's RSS to Email Aggregator

'The richest man in the world just stiffed me for $6.00!'

2003-05-13T13:05:05+00:00

The Register: 'The richest man in the world just stiffed me for $6.00!'

Microsoft's iLoo Project A Hoax

2003-05-13T12:05:30+00:00

Slashdot: Microsoft's iLoo Project A Hoax

phpMyAdmin 2.5.0

2003-05-13T07:05:39+00:00

phpMyAdmin 2.5.0

Minister trapped by rogue BMW

2003-05-13T04:05:29+00:00

Thai Minister trapped by rogue BMW

straw port for FreeBSD

2003-05-12T20:05:13+00:00

straw port for FreeBSD

Zimmermann, Scholz und Partner

2003-05-12T18:05:21+00:00

Zimmermann, Scholz und Partner, Attorneys in Hamburg

A Boy and His Pelican

2003-05-12T18:05:02+00:00

Nokia 3650

2003-05-12T12:05:59+00:00

I ordered my Nokia 3650

Estonia blazes internet trail

2003-05-12T11:05:06+00:00

theage.com.au: Estonia blazes internet trail

After the Hamburg Blogger-Treffen

2003-05-12T04:05:38+00:00

We had a nice evening last night at our first ever BlogMeet Hamburg. Nine of us us altogether, and except for Heiko, I didn't 'know' anyone until last night. The group was quite diverse, including two people from the local blogging start-up 20six and a couple of diarists from Diaryland, who find it amazing that some of us blog under our real names. Of course I didn't note names or URLs, although Heiko took pictures. I'm already looking forward to next time, someplace quieter where it's easier to talk. (By the way, I never paid for my drinks. Do I owe anyone?)

Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deceptionn

2003-05-11T14:05:37+00:00

NY Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deceptionn

Hamburger Blogger-Treffen

2003-05-11T13:05:04+00:00

As announced by hebig.com and Noch'n Blogg, there's an informal meeting of Hamburg bloggers this evening at Alex (Alsterpavillion on Jungfernstieg) starting at 7 pm. WiFi is available, as, I imagine, beverages of all sorts. I'll be there as well.

50 Years Schockwellenreiter

2003-05-11T10:05:54+00:00

50 Years Schockwellenreiter

This is a test of Japanese

2003-05-11T06:05:33+00:00

Jonathon Delacour: This is a test of Japanese

Apple's exit strategy

2003-05-11T05:05:27+00:00

USS Clueless: Apple's exit strategy

Smoking for health care

2003-05-10T13:05:07+00:00

FAZ: Health system subsidized with higher tobacco tax. Smoking for health care may make as little sense as making love for virginity, but the Red-Green coalition is proposing a €1 per pack increase in the cigarette tax to help finance the health insurance system. The package aims to decrease premiums from 14.4% to less than 13% of gross wages.

The cigarette tax should bring in €4 billion, just 20% of the €20 billion savings needed. So guess who pays the difference? For the most part, the partients, since other parts of the package include raising co-payments on prescriptions (to between €4 and €8), removing sick and maternity pay from the health insurance system, and various incentives (i.e. fees) to discourage patients from going directly to a specialist without seeing their family doctor first.

This puts the state even deeper in a moral hole. The health minister would like to discourage smoking, but the finance minister needs the money from the tobacco tax. This kind of reminds of the Woody Allen story about his brother who thought he was a chicken. They didn't want to bring him to a doctor, because they needed the eggs.

2003-05-10T09:05:48+00:00

Berlin? Nie gehört!

Zempt

2003-05-10T08:05:03+00:00

kalsey.com: Zempt: open-source cross-platform offline posting for Movable Type

How To Cook Quick Links, Bork Bork Bork!

2003-05-10T05:05:17+00:00

Danger, danger, this post contains PHP code! Also note I've changed my mind a bit and put the quick links below any main posts for the day, rather than above.

Note that the qlinks are saved in a separate blog. I'm not sure if that's the best idea or not... I could have defined a category for quick links. But it's difficult to define different entry formats for categories using MT tags. I find using a separate blog easier, then including the files with quick links in the index of the main blog, so the main blog always has the newest quick links without rebuilding. However, using a separate blog makes finding the links for each day somewhat complicated.

Each day can be found in /YYYY/MM/DD/qlinks.inc. I could just include this file in the MTDateFooter for each main post... EXCEPT that I would then miss the quick links for the days where I had no main post. So in the MTDateHeader, I need to check all the dates between the current and the previous post.

At the top of the index template (before the MTEntries tag at any rate) we need to define some variables to make it easier to calculate dates:

<?php 
$offset=0;
define(DAY,60*60*24);
define(NOW,time());
?>

Since NOW is defined in seconds, we have count back DAYs in seconds as well. The $offset keeps track of which days we've already checked.

The meat of the script is in the MTDateHeader, where we check each day before the date of the current entry for quicklinks, before we output anything for the current day. For each day, we print a header and include the quick links only if a quick links file exists for that day.

<MTDateHeader>
<?php
  $mt_date='<$MTEntryDate format="%d %B %Y"$>';
  $ql_date=date('d F Y',NOW-$offset*DAY);
  while ($ql_date<>$mt_date) {
    $inc_file=date('./Y/m/d/',NOW-$offset*DAY)
      .'qlinks.inc';
    if (is_readable($inc_file)) {
      echo '<h2>',$ql_date,'</h2>';
      @include($inc_file);
    }
    $offset++;
    $ql_date=date('d F Y',NOW-$offset*DAY);
  }
?>
<h2><$MTEntryDate format="%d %B %Y"$></h2>
</MTDateHeader>

Then we do all our normal entry stuff. After that, we need an MTDateFooter for the current day's quick links.

<MTDateFooter>
<?php 
@include('<$MTEntryDate format="./%Y/%m/%d/qlinks.inc"$>');
$offset++;
?>

The @ before 'include' means there will be no warning message if the file does not exist.

I'm not particularly happy that I have up to 15 separate includes on my index page. A cleaner solution would be to put all the quick links into an RSS file, and loop through that. I'll do that in version 0.02.

Or I may even put the quick links back on the sidebar. Nothing in life is permanent.

I'm SICK of finding my OWN BLOG when researching a topic I've ranted about

2003-05-09T13:05:48+00:00

Russell Beattie: I'm SICK of finding my OWN BLOG when researching a topic I've ranted about

Liberty Kid

2003-05-09T08:05:29+00:00

newsrack blog: Liberty Kid

Life is like driving a cab

2003-05-09T04:05:07+00:00

AccordionGuy: Life is like cab driving. There are four rules

PADL: NIS to LDAP Migration

2003-05-08T21:05:33+00:00

PADL: NIS to LDAP Migration Tools

The land of Goethe and Schiller

2003-05-08T20:05:44+00:00

The land of Goethe and Schiller is now the land of Bohlen and Effenberg

Short Time

2003-05-08T18:05:50+00:00

The adage goes that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, while a depression is when you lose yours. By that criterion, the German economy is now one step closer to a depression.

I will probably be offered the 'opportunity' to work a 4 day week starting in June. This is not entirely voluntary, but part of the lost income may be covered by the state (un)employment office since my employer is implementing short time to avoid layoffs. (Although paying people not to work makes as little sense as paying subsidies to farmers not to plant crops.)

I'm lucky in that my family is not particularly dependent on my income, since I've allowed my wife to become a very successful career woman, and for now her job seems very secure. For most families a sudden 20% pay cut would be catastrophic. But since our first layoffs almost exactly a year ago, this kind of thing hasn't been that hard to foresee. Now that we have a workers' council, things are quite a bit more regulated (meaning the cutbacks will be made 'fairly' rather than on merit or on a whim).

Of course, the big question is whether this is just a temporary situation that will be over in a few months when business picks up, or whether it's just the latest step on the road to insolvency. Maybe I should take a another look at that article on trophy husbands.

Baltic Blog dines with the Prime Minister of Eston

2003-05-08T18:05:04+00:00

Baltic Blog dines with the Prime Minister of Estonia

SSL certificates starting at $39

2003-05-08T12:05:55+00:00

InstantSSL: SSL certificates starting at $39

Kurzarbeit

2003-05-08T08:05:30+00:00

DGB: Kurzarbeit

War sucks big time

2003-05-08T04:05:28+00:00

Salam Pax: War sucks big time

Brilliant man in an asylum

2003-05-08T04:05:25+00:00

via Alwin: Brilliant man in an asylum fights doctors

iLoo, WWW in the WC

2003-05-07T11:05:37+00:00

Gizmodo: iLoo. WWW in the WC

Instapundit Poetry

2003-05-07T03:05:06+00:00

Instapundit poetry

Poles Want Germans, Danes in Iraqi Peace Force

2003-05-06T20:05:23+00:00

Reuters: Poles Want Germans, Danes in Iraqi Peace Force

McDonald's Smells Good

2003-05-06T13:05:43+00:00

Fool.com: McDonald's Smells Good

France helped Iraqi officials escape

2003-05-06T11:05:50+00:00

Washington Times: France helped Iraqi officials escape

pim fortuyn 1 year later

2003-05-06T08:05:44+00:00

Adam Curry: Pim Fortuyn 1 year later

blo.gs now tracks updates from Blogger!

2003-05-06T04:05:05+00:00

Way cool! blo.gs now tracks updates from Blogger!

You, too, can be a scriptygoddess!

2003-05-06T04:05:03+00:00

You, too, can be a scriptygoddess!

Occupation and liberation both at the same time?

2003-05-05T11:05:40+00:00

NY Review of Books: The Fall of Baghdad

Bionomics: The Inevitability of Capitalism, or Economy As Ecosystem

2003-05-05T09:05:51+00:00

Stefan Smalla reviews Bionomics: Economy As Ecosystem

Christine's Lullaby

2003-05-05T05:05:29+00:00

Via Lileks: Christine's Lullaby

Say Good-bye Fritz

2003-05-04T20:05:42+00:00

Winds of Change.NET: Say Good-bye Fritz

Gerhard Schroeder has had a tough week

2003-05-04T20:05:17+00:00

Marstonalia: German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has had a tough week

You have to give the weapon inspections more time

2003-05-04T20:05:01+00:00

Via BuzzMachine: Hooman: 'Calm down. You have to give the weapon inspections more time'

SSL and all that

2003-05-03T16:05:37+00:00

One cool thing about my new server setup is that his has SSL built in. You can even see an SSL version of PapaScott, but it's pretty meaningless to encrypt a public, static page, and I doubt that my entries will make any more sense encrypted than they do plain. But you can click on the little padlock to see my certificate.

If you follow that link, you'll notice that your browser doesn't trust my certificate. Your browser should be suspicious, since I created the certificate myself, and any Joe Blow can generate a certificate that claims to be from PapaScott. But since I'm using SSL only for myself and not to sell anything, I'm not going to pay money for a real certificate (i.e. of the functions provided by SSL, I need only encryption, not authentication).

SSL can be useful for for a my blog by encrypting connections that require a password, like phpMyAdmin or the mt.cgi in Movable Type. I'm forcing those pages to use SSL so no one can go sniffing my passwords and then pretend to be me. I'm not sure why anyone would want to pretend to be me, but any page worth a password is worth encrypting. It's a shame that most hosters offer SSL only as an expensive add-on.

Generating a certificate with OpenSSL is pretty easy (although tedious), and creating your own CA has been covered by a couple of articles at O'Reilly Network. Or you can just read the book (which despite the title, applies mostly to BSD and OS X as well.

Russ gushes over his new Nokia 3650

2003-05-03T15:05:19+00:00

Russ gushes over his new Nokia 3650

Crash Your IE

2003-05-03T11:05:45+00:00

Via Slashdot: Crash your IE!

St. Pauli : Burghausen 2:2

2003-05-02T19:05:07+00:00

NDR Online: St. Pauli - Burghausen 2:2

German warnings not borne out by Iraq wa

2003-05-02T16:05:56+00:00

SFGate: German warnings not borne out by Iraq war

Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups

2003-05-02T16:05:29+00:00

via diveintomark: Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Linux and Rsync

Secret Asian Man

2003-05-02T13:05:49+00:00

AccordionGuy: Secret Asian Man

PapaScott's CafePress Shop

2003-05-02T08:05:36+00:00

PapaScott's Shop, powered by CafePress. Featuring apperal with the PapaScott logo in the 'visited link' color. Useful should you ever want to go to a blogger meeting and pretend to be me.

Trophy Husband

2003-05-01T19:05:37+00:00

I'd show my wife this Fortune article on stay-at-home husbands who make it possible for their wives to pursue high-level careers, but she'd probably ask me why I don't have breakfast ready for her when she gets up. (via Ministry of Propaganda)

By the way, as I predicted yesterday, she did spend the entire day today behind the counter at her new location, which was very busy.

New Digs

2003-05-01T19:05:24+00:00

This afternoon PapaScott moved to its own virtual server, running on FreeBSD and hosted by EscapeBox in Berlin. The DNS change will have propagated by noon tomorrow, so until then you might get redirected to the new IP address.

I'd been considering for several weeks now whether to move PapaScott to a dedicated or virtual server. Not that I need it. The site is pretty low tech and low volume, and doesn't require any great amounts of CPU or bandwidth. I just wanted to be root! I set up web servers on FreeBSD and Linux for a living, and I wanted to be able to set up my web server the way I want to, install the latest PHP if I feel like it, or try out Tomcat. And to able to break things, although I don't expect to break anything.

Inspired by Burningbird's quest for a new server, I started searching around, discovered a couple of hosters that have excellent reviews, and made my choice.

I still highly recommend Cornerhost as a hoster for anyone who does not want or need root.

Bush Regime Playing Cards

2003-05-01T15:05:31+00:00

uggabugga: Bush Regime Playing Cards

USB Floppy Disk Drive RAID

2003-05-01T10:05:45+00:00

via Editorial Notes: USB Floppy Disk Drive RAID

"We are trying to be successful without being evil

2003-05-01T07:05:58+00:00

Google: We are trying to be successful without being evil

Alabama Legislators Render State's Obscenity Law Illegal

2003-05-01T07:05:53+00:00

TalkLeft: Alabama Legislators Render State's Obscenity Law Illegal

Apple Music Store: The New 8-Track Tape

2003-05-01T07:05:20+00:00

The Mac Observer: Apple Music Store: The New 8-Track Tape

Right Next Door

2003-04-30T19:04:10+00:00

I don't mention Mama or her employer (a firm I'm sure you've heard of) by name here anymore, since she wants to avoid being googled. But this afternoon she opened a location in the next town to where we live; silently, so to speak, since her ad in the local paper said the the opening would be tomorrow. And they were still overrun by customers in the first hour. So she's very happy, and she won't mind going back tomorrow to help out, even though it's a holiday.

the only thing we were allowed to talk about at the UN was WMD

2003-04-30T17:04:52+00:00

Josh Marshall: 'the only thing we were allowed to talk about at the UN was weapons of mass destruction'

iTunes Does Indeed Do DRM

2003-04-30T12:04:10+00:00

0xDECAFBAD: iTunes Does Indeed Do DRM

Brodit

2003-04-30T11:04:41+00:00

Brodit: Dashboard brackets for cell phones and PDAs

Science and literature

2003-04-30T10:04:47+00:00

Jane Galt: Science and literature

My bad...what?

2003-04-30T10:04:26+00:00

Matthew Langham: My bad...what?

Old Enough To Know Better

2003-04-29T19:04:59+00:00

Some things are better left to professionals. Right now I wish potty training could be one of them.

In the presence of a professional child care provider, Christopher is able to go without a diaper the entire day. Then his amatuer child care father takes him home. Despite denying repeatly that he needs to use the toilet, Christopher walks in the door, pulls down his pants, marches into the living room and proceeds to piss on his play carpet.

He has the ability. He has the confidence. He even has the stamina. He just doesn't have the desire. And, I suspect, he wanted to piss his father off.

Good thing the carpet is 100% polyester.

Berlin faces violent 1 May

2003-04-29T19:04:32+00:00

Expatica: Berlin faces violent 1 May

U.S. Troops Fire on Iraqi Protesters, Leaving 15 Dead

2003-04-29T19:04:01+00:00

NY Times: U.S. Troops Fire on Iraqi Protesters, Leaving 15 Dead

Who's 'we' then?

2003-04-29T08:04:06+00:00

Traumwind: Who's 'we' then?

Getting Entropy

2003-04-29T07:04:32+00:00

Sunfreeware: OpenSSH - getting entropy

Quick Links

2003-04-29T04:04:41+00:00

You may have noticed that I've been having fun the past fews days with quick links in my sidebar, a lá Anil Dash. It's a way I can archive a link and snap off a comment or two without taking up a lot of column inches (vertical pixels?) on the home page. Technically, I set up a second blog for the quick links with a very simple index page, which gets included here via php.

Now I'm not sure if the sidebar is the right place to put them, seeing as there will (hopefully) be a lot more of them than regular posts. One option is to aggregate them into a single post of their own each day (a lá 0xDECAFBAD or diveintomark). But I don't want to break the flow, if you know what I mean. The other questions are whether I should ping weblogs.com when I add a quick link (probably not) or whether I should include them in my RSS feed (maybe).

Apple music service

2003-04-29T04:04:20+00:00

The Register: Apple music service not available in non-DMCA countries

Bundeswehr shows respect to injured Americans

2003-04-28T18:04:52+00:00

Bundeswehr shows respect to injured Americans

Showing Respect

2003-04-28T18:04:16+00:00

Last week at Winds of Change I saw the story of German Bundeswehr soldiers saluting injured American soldiers arriving from Iraq, as reported by an American chaplain. Today, I saw the same story (translated into German) on page 4 of our local paper. The Abendblatt reported that it had been forwarded by email to a reader in Hamburg. It's nice to see the story in a German paper, but blogs were faster!

DW-World: Gericht will Eschede-Prozess einstellen

2003-04-28T17:04:26+00:00

Judge calls for halt of Eschede trial

'We do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war'

2003-04-28T12:04:20+00:00

'We do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war'

McWiFi

2003-04-28T11:04:39+00:00

Charles Hudson: Is McWi-Fi a Good Idea?

Spring Barrage of Holidays in Germany

2003-04-28T03:04:55+00:00

Stefan Smalla: Spring Barrage of Holidays in Germany

calming the savage toddler

2003-04-27T14:04:11+00:00

the working mom: calming the savage toddler

Subversion

2003-04-27T13:04:51+00:00

Subversion: a replacement for CVS

2003-04-27T08:04:54+00:00

Bjørn Stærk in slow-history mode

VD-Server

2003-04-27T06:04:33+00:00

VD-Server: Scalable Virtual Servers

Matrix in Vienna

2003-04-27T06:04:06+00:00

I've got my flight and I'm getting my hotel set for the BlogTalk conference in Vienna, May 23/24. However, the film The Matrix Reloaded opens in Germany and Austria the very same weekend. Is anyone interested in organizing a group to check it out? I imagine either before or after the actual conference (i.e. Thursday or Saturday evening) would be best. There are English theatres in Vienna, of course, but German would be OK with me. But it would probably be good to reserve tickets. Leave me a comment, send me a mail, or leave a note at the BlogTalk bulletin board.

On a related note: Horst, are you still planning on skipping town that weekend?

Wenn Schuld zu komplex wird

2003-04-27T06:04:04+00:00

Eschede trial to be halted?

EscapeBox

2003-04-27T05:04:36+00:00

EscapeBox: Secure Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers

people who want equal time can get their own damn blogs

2003-04-25T16:04:15+00:00

"people who want equal time can get their own damn blogs"

Every little bit burns

2003-04-25T10:04:05+00:00

Keep the Bird burning

Hamburg BlogMeet

2003-04-25T09:04:15+00:00

Hamburg BlogMeet

Schill and Al Queda?

2003-04-24T19:04:24+00:00

In a new comment to an old post on water cannons (used by Hamburg policeon schoolchildren), narciso asks about Interior Senator Schill:

Isn't that where Atta's Al Queda cell was. Isn't the discovery of said cell, a key to Schill's victory. Doesn't that have something to do with it.

Yes, Atta's cell was in Hamburg (his old apartment finally has a new tenant, I read a few weeks ago), but that fact was not a factor for Schill. The Hamburg election in 2001 was held just days after 9/11, but the issue of crime had been a thorn in the the side of the SPD mayors Vorscherau and Runde for years. Schill attracted a lot a media attention as a criminal judge (sentencing vandals to jail time) and critic of both the SPD and his fellow judges. Not surprisingly, he was 'demoted' to civil court and switched to politics, starting his own party.

Schill made wild promises about hiring 1000 new police officers and cutting crime by 1/2 within 100 days of taking office. That hasn't happened, of course, but crime is down (according to Schill's statistics), and he's done some media stunts like proposing blue police uniforms and cars instead of the traditional green. Just today, he was in the paper twice... once for blocking a state contract with the local church (he doesn't like the bishop, and says 'no Hamburger should kneel before the church'), and again for raising the speed limit on certain autobahn stretches. After winning over 19% in the last election, polls these days put his party at around 8%. He does know how to stay in the news, though.

What Time Is It?

2003-04-24T08:04:51+00:00

I'm still not in the swing of things. Mama had an early meeting this morning, so I was to take Christopher this morning, However, I overslept by a full 2 hours, which of course wreacked total havoc on our tight weekday schedule.

At least, thanks to Easter Monday, it's a short 4-day work week. So is next week, thanks to May Day. One can get used to 4-day weeks rather quickly. I think I say that every year at Easter.

TypePad

2003-04-23T16:04:13+00:00

Everyone and their mother has already linked to it, so it's no use to mention the announcement for TypePad by the makers of Movable Type. But it will be cool to see how Movable Type can scale to a full-blown web hosting service, and whether Ben and Mena can make money doing it.

Good Morning Sunshine

2003-04-22T04:04:47+00:00

Not that we'll get any sympathy from anyone, but after 3 weeks vacation and the Easter holiday, Mama and I have to both get up at 6:00 am today and go to work. What an awful thought! I hope we can survive.

Great Moments in Tech Support

2003-04-20T16:04:09+00:00

It was a beautiful Easter Sunday today. The weather was almost as nice in our backyard as in Florida. One thing I missed while I was gone was a new 4.x release of FreeBSD, so I opened up the ThinkPad on the patio and set about updating the BSD machine and the ThinkPad itself. Update source, build world, build kernel, install kernel, reboot, install world.

Everything went smooth as silk, but a few minutes after booting up the ThinkPad, it starting beeping, quietly but consistently, every three minutes or so. Had I mistakenly turned on power management? A cosmetic flaw in my ThinkPad is that the battery doesn't charge. OK, that would be a fatal flaw for most users, but I only use the ThinkPad around the house and plugging in to an outlet isn't that big a deal. But power management would complain about a low battery.

So I checked 'ps -ax', but no apmd is listed. I check /var/log/messages... nothing unusual there. The machine beeps again. I shut down X. I do a restart. The beeps continue. I turn the sound volune down to zero. I check the BIOS settings. The machine beeps again. Frustrated, I turn the whole thing off.

The machine beeps again.

Now that I have the screen folded down, I see that one of our cordless phone handsets is on the patio table. The battery is low, and it is beeping, quietly but consistently, every three minutes or so.

Backpedal in Place

2003-04-20T12:04:48+00:00

Some blogs (BuzzMachine, The Command Post, USS Clueless) have cited a Reuters report of a Spiegel interview. The Reuters article reports that the interview "is the furthest Schroeder has gone in trying to mend fences with the U.S.":

"I deeply regret there were exaggerated comments -- also from cabinet members of my previous government," Schroeder told Der Spiegel magazine when asked if there were "grounds for self-criticism" for damage he caused to U.S.-German relations.
The declaration was the furthest Schroeder has gone in trying to mend fences with the U.S.

Except that Schröder's words were nothing new. He's been saying the same thing for weeks now. Note that he's not regretting anything that he said himself, only that there had been "exagertated comments"... also from the US, I presume. The German press is not reporting the interview as any change in foreign policy. Indeed, Spiegel has the interview filed under domestic news, as the main theme is Schröder's struggle with his own party over his economic reforms. The rest of the press isn't mentioning the article at all.

Maybe Reuters' man in Berlin should go out looking for real news instead of excerpting Spiegel articles.

We're Back

2003-04-19T09:04:49+00:00

We're back in Old Europe, after flying all night. We won't be coherent, though, until probably Monday. The Lufthansa flight was actually pretty good, mostly because the plane was rather empty and the 3 of us had 5 seats.

Did anything happen while we were gone?

Just A Note To Say...

2003-04-14T23:04:58+00:00

(Anyone familiar with current children's videos will know from the headline what movie Christopher has been watching constantly the past two weeks.)

We're still in Florida, but have been following events in Iraq via the St. Petersburg Times and occasional fleeting glimpses at TV. When the newspaper headline is all upper case, we can tell that it was a big day.

The TV critic for the Times, Eric Deggens, had a nice observation about Fox News today: "Roger Ailes... has excelled by capitalizing on an essential truth about American TV viewers: Often we say we want one thing, when we really want another. We may say we want objective coverage, but we really want news that fits our own cultural world view." I don't think that applies only to American viewers...

I'll have to see if I can pick up that Kagan book that Alwin Hawkins recommended before we leave. The Times had a good review of the book and an Op-Ed by him as well (Kagan, not Hawkins).

Rockaway Beach

2003-04-04T21:04:00+00:00

"It's not hard, not far to reach
We can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach"

Actually, we are at Indian Rocks Beach, just south of Clearwater, Florida. Luckily they don't "blast out the disco on the radio" like in the Ramones song. Sunny, quiet, and connected, thanks to a $10 one-month account at Budget Dialup, which is working more reliably than the big-time provider Mama uses to dial into her employer's VPN.

I was going to get a pre-paid card for my spare cellphone (Motorola Timeport, cost €13 used) for the two weeks, but US cellular service is so expensive and confusing, I think I'll just pay the roaming charges for my German provider for the few times I'm going to call.

By the way, the WiFi on the Lufthansa flight was out of service, although they offered plain-old-ethernet. Mama used up her battery reading her mail at work, and they only offered electrical sockets in business and first class. Sitting in economy with a three-year-old is not a optimal environment for using a notebook anyway. Despite the fears of World Wide Klein, Lufthansa did not lose any of our luggage, but we only had two suitcases.

Master Builder

2003-04-02T03:04:52+00:00

One more before we go. Christopher was impresssed by the S-Bahn in Berlin, so impressed that last night he built his own version out of Legos, all by himself.

He can even smile, if you ask him to.

We're Off

2003-04-01T15:04:17+00:00

Well, actually, we're leaving tomorrow for Floida, but the computers at home are getting turned off now. Maybe I'll post from Florida, maybe I'll even post from the flight over (we're taking the Lufthansa route where inflight WiFi is being tested), or maybe I won't post at all until Easter when we return.

Children's Stories

2003-03-30T20:03:50+00:00

I've been refraining from commenting on the war since it started, since I'm assuming that 90% of what the media is reporting is wrong and I don't know which 10% is right. And frankly, at 7 pm when I have the choice between the nightly news on ZDF and Christopher's favorite cartoon on the Kinderkanal, I know which one we pick. I would appreciate some simple stories like the ones Bjørn Stærk mentioned from a newspaper in Norway, "without that compulsive need to put everything in perspective. Perspective is fine, but worthless unless you have something to, you know, put in perspective."

(Perhaps another reason is that I've been mentally on vacation for the past two weeks, even though we don't leave until Wednesday. We'll be spending two weeks on the Gulf coast in Florida, in the shadow of US Central Command. I imagine it will be one of the safest places on earth.)

I Was On TV!

2003-03-29T10:03:05+00:00

According to Burningbird, a link to PapaScott was shown on the NBC Nightly News. They did a piece on warblogs and showed a Google search where a PapaScott page is entry number 3.

Who cares that my paper on warblogs wasn't accepted for the BlogTalk conference. I was on TV! Did I look good? Did my hair look alright? Is this something I can put on my resumé?

Der Brand: Weapon, Strategy

2003-03-27T04:03:37+00:00

I'm about 1/3 through reading Der Brand, the historical account of 'Germany in the bombing war 1940-1945'. I've finished the first two sections entitled 'Waffe' and 'Strategie'. Since a couple of readers have mentioned that they will be reading it as well, I'll give my impressions so far.

This book looks at the bombing from the point of view of the civilian victims on the ground, the 500,000 dead and 30 million homeless. Most of them were not in Hamburg and Dresden, but in middle sized cities throughout Germany, in bombing raids that made no headlines but killed a few hundred people each night.

Is such a view of any value today? Does it have any meaning for non-historians to look at the 'victims' that belonged to an aggressor nation? I think yes. First, this is the gestation of modern Germany, the hour before 'Hour Null'. The earliest pictures of post-war Germany tend to be the Trummerfauen, the women carrying away the rubble in the cities by hand. We don't see what created the rubble, and what those women endured before it was safe enough to begin the cleanup. I think it's important to know that to understand Germany's view of itself and its place in Europe and the world today, what ties to the past were shattered by the bombs and what ties remained.

Second, by today's standards we distinguish between 'regime' and 'civilians', at least we try, and today's weapon technology is capable of that to some degree. The weapons of 60 years ago were not as selective. Success was dropping a bomb within two miles of target, and success rates were 30% or less, with 5% loss of aircraft and crews for each raid (as long as the German air defense still existed). Those weapons were not precise enough to target only a factory or a railway station. A neighborhood was as precise as they could get.

The bombing of civilian neighborhoods had the military objectives of causing economic collapse through millions of homeless and shortage of factory workers, and of demoralizing the civilian population. Neither objective was achieved. Was the bombing of German cities a war crime? I don't think that this is a question that can be answered today. We cannot apply today's standards to the actions of a generation and a half ago. And victors, by definition, are never tried for war crimes. I am, however, very glad that I do not have to make the difficult decisions that Churchill and the Allied military leaders of the time had to make. I'm not sure I'd be able to sleep nights, no matter what I chose.

If The Americans Think...

2003-03-26T20:03:49+00:00

I know this CNN screenshot is old, but it's been months since Mama (Codename Voldemort, as in she-who-must-not-be-named) has submitted anything for the website, I've posted it just for her. I'm not sure who wrote the accompanying text. I've translated just some of it.

"If the Americans think that Switzerland is located as shown on this map from CNN, then one just has to ask: what in heaven's name are they really bombing?"

Water Cannons Continued

2003-03-26T18:03:41+00:00

Today the police action from Monday appears in a better light. The police apparently warned demonstrators for 20 minutes that water cannons would be used before breaking up the protest. The Abendblatt reports that only two official complaints of police misconduct have been filed. Meanwhile, official investigations have been launched... both into the police action itself, and whether teachers encouraged students to skip school and participate in the protest.

One still has to wonder... throughout Germany there have been massive, peaceful student protests against the war. Only in Hamburg did the protests turn violent. Can you tell us why, Senator 'Law-and-Order' Schill?

Trigger Happy on the Water Cannons

2003-03-25T20:03:17+00:00

Yesterday was the first day of school in Hamburg after spring vacation, but 20,000 students decided to skip class and protest the war. The march attempted to reach the gates of the US Consulate, and things got ugly. The consulate was off the approved route, and some rouge protesters did throw stones at police. But does the get-tough stance of Interior Senator 'Judge Merciless' Schill really call for water cannons and bobby sticks to be used on 7th and 8th graders?

Embedded

2003-03-25T16:03:00+00:00

The question is so obvious, but I haven't seen it asked yet: Can a journalist report objectively about someone he's embed with?

No Kisses In Times Of War

2003-03-24T22:03:27+00:00

The pop duo t.A.T.u. performed on "Wetten Dass" on Saturday, and kissed rather passionately on stage. ZDF turned the cameras away... because of the war in Iraq! A network spokesman was quoted in the Abendblatt. "It wasn't appropriate for a family show. And the mood of the broadcast was set by the war. We wanted everything to be somewhat 'softer'."

(Note the use of the 'New German' term 'softer' by the spokesman. As is usually the case with English words inserted directly into a German sentence, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.)

27 Hours Berlin

2003-03-24T13:03:09+00:00

We're back. Christopher loved it. I would have been better off staying home in bed, but I then would have been home alone with Christopher, so rest and recuperation was not an option. Since I was pretty much a wet blanket, I'll try to tell about our visit from Christopher's perspective.

Riding the Inter City Express from Hamburg to Berlin was the main highlight, of course. Riding in a taxi from Bahnhof Zoo to the hotel was also an new and exciting experience. That night from his bed in Mama's room he could see the taxi stand in front of the hotel, and count the taxis as they came and went.

Our goal Saturday afternoon was Potsdamer Platz, with the obligatory McDonald's visit. Chistopher was impressed by an elephant poster at the Imax theater. It was on a set of exit doors, and people would walk through the elephants on their way out. We had to do that ourselves, of course. We did some light shopping, and we bought Christopher a book. We met Mama's cousin for a early dinner at Tony Roma's. Christopher was impressed by the attention from the wait staff and ran up and down the stairs and through the aisles. We had no plans for the evening, which is good since I went to bed before Christopher.

On Sunday morning we drove to Potsdam to see Sanssouci Park and the New Palace. There were a lot of parents with small children walking through the grounds. Christopher was impressed by the castle (he got to stand inside one of the old guardposts), but was just as impressed by the gravel on the walkways. At one point he gathered some stones, and piled them together to start a 'fire'. I doubt that the park officials would have been impressed.

Mama's meetings started at 1 pm, so Christopher and I spent the afternoon riding the S-Bahn and eating ice cream at Alexanderplatz. Each time I'm in Berlin I keep hoping that the Alex has been restored as a vibrant city center, and each time I'm disappointed. But they still have the funky world clock with the solar system, and, of course, the TV tower. We then headed back to Bahnhof Zoo to catch the ICE back to Hamburg and arrived home exhausted. I went back to the doctor today, and I won't inflict myself on my colleagues at work until at least Wednesday.

2003-03-21T14:03:43+00:00

Thanks to some powerful antibiotics, it looks like our trip to Berlin can go on as planned. If you hear about any damage in Berlin this weekend, remember, it might not be anti-war protesters. It might be Christopher.

I'm in bed, but feeling better. The wi-fi reception is good and I can read about the news in Iraq without having to endure the droning TV coverage. The prescription was my first experience with 'aut idem'. My doctor prescribed Ciprobeta, but the pharmacist didn't have that brand in stock and asked if she could substitute Ciprohexal.

Nobody Should Care

2003-03-20T20:03:50+00:00

On a day like today, nobody should care that I am home sick and miserable. Or that tomorrow I have to choose between the lesser of two evils, between going to work sick or staying home with Christopher and Oma (i.e. my mother-in-law).

I need to get well by Saturday, since Christopher and I are taking the ICE train to Berlin! Mama has a one day break between meetings, and she has invited us to her luxury hotel suite.

ZDF has just admitted that they have nothing new to report, but they continue to broadcast their special report anyway.

Mobbing: Alles Quatsch

2003-03-19T17:03:39+00:00

Some of the students quoted in the Spiegel Online article (also on p 46 of this week's print edition) on exchange students in the US that I posted on earlier have responded. Their comments were taken out of context, and they are in fact having a great time during their school year in the States. And Der Spiegel is apparently suffering from an extreme bout of anti-Americanism. Thanks to The Cartoonist for pointing out the link!

Der Brand

2003-03-19T04:03:10+00:00

As is befitting my mood on the pending war in Iraq, I've starting reading Der Brand (The Fire), the account by historian Jörg Friedrich of the Allied bombing of German cities in World War II (mentioned this past weekend in the NY Times). The book has been controversial outside Gemany for supposedly implying that the bombing of German cities was a war crime. I'm going to try to judge for myself. It's heavy, slow reading. I hope I make it to the end.

NDP Not Outlawed

2003-03-18T17:03:05+00:00

Almost lost in the international news, the Federal Constitional Court in Karlsruhe threw out the government's case to outlaw the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party. After being stalled for over a year, the case was tossed out on a rather significant technicality, namely that at least 30 of the party's 200 national and state leaders were paid police informants. It was thus impossible to for the court determine how much of the party's activities were instigated by informers for the government.

Interior Minister Schilly and the state ministries are pinning the blame on each other. In the end, the various ministries didn't know about the other's informants. Federalism doesn't work if you don't talk to one another. And the NDP lives on.

Mobbing Against German Exchange Students in the USA

2003-03-17T19:03:57+00:00

Seeing as my wife and I met as exchange students in high school, I had to check out the Spiegel Online article on mobbing against German exchange students. They interviewed several German students in rural America who have met hostility to Germany's and their own personal anti-war beliefs. Back in 1980 Mama was branded as a 'Pinko Commie' by her high school classmates, and I think she still has the T-shirt they gave her to prove it. And she was reminded about Nazis as well.

As an exchange student, your mission is not to teach about your home country, but to listen and learn, about your guest country, and, more importantly, about yourself. The political situation and the media frenzy around it make the situation more tense than we had to deal with 20 years ago, but there are assholes to deal with in any situation. Especially when Europe and the US seem to be drifting apart, the experiences of exchange students are more important than ever. Finding a spouse at the same time is a side benefit reserved for a select few.

Testing One Two Three

2003-03-16T17:03:27+00:00

blogrolling.com is now accepting pings, so I had to change my blogroll code not to always overwrite the update time with that from blo.gs. And I have to test it. Therefore, a test post.

Wag Chirac

2003-03-15T15:03:58+00:00

I don't know all that much about recent French politics, so I found this post by Sylvain Galineau (an expat French citizen in Ireland) at Chicago Boyz most interesting and helpful in explaining the French position on Iraq. In short, it's because France pretends it did not lose World War II, and has thus never been able to deal with the aftermath.

Here We Are

2003-03-14T20:03:25+00:00

We're in the middle of a hard month here. Mama has multi-night business trips every week in March (normal is one per month), and that makes neither of us happy. And Christopher least of all. So tonight, when Mama returned from 3 days in Munich, we together with Oma celebrated with a trip to the bistro, with Apfelschorle (apple juice spritzer), pizza, and ice cream. Actually, Christopher calls all golden-colored fizzy beverages Apfelschorle, so Mama and I took the beer Apfelschorle and let him take the juice Apfelschorle. And Christopher was struggling to keep his eyes open after the pizza, so we decided to save the ice cream for tomorrow. On the way home, Christopher kept muttering "Tolle Apfelschorle" (toll=super or great), so I guess he enjoyed himself. And I'll wait until at least tomorrow to write anything more about international politics.

Freedom Tofu

2003-03-13T20:03:04+00:00

I'm with Heiko Hebig on this issue. If we're going to have Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast, we cannot stop there. If we are really going to do the weasels in, we need Freedom Burgers instead of Hamburgers, and Freedom Weenies instead of Frankfurters. That is, until the US Congress starts reading the Aardvark, then the Weenies will have to go as well. Freedom Sausages? Wait, aren't those Vienna Sausages?

And what about Braunschweiger?

Everywhere Overnight

2003-03-12T10:03:19+00:00

It seems everyone and his brother has mentioned that McDonald's is to Offer Wireless Internet. But does anyone read the fine print? The press release did not come from McDonald's, but from their wireless provider. This is a 3 month trial program. In 10 restaurants. Out of 20000. At a company that tests a hamburger for years before they roll it out. Do the math.

Illegal Exports

2003-03-12T07:03:58+00:00

Amiland cites a story from Die Welt on illegal exports by German firms to Iraq. But he draws the wrong conclusion. This does not support the den Beste speculation that covering up illegal exports might be a motive for German opposition to the war.

The dozens of cases of illegal exports have been uncovered by German prosecutors. If the German government is trying to cover up these exports, why haven't the prosecutors been muzzled. They are, after all, very sensitive to political pressure, as was shown in the case of Helmut Kohl and the "black suitcase".

Speaking of Kohl, if there were government collusion with illegal exporters, it would have had to have begun well before the German regime change in 1998. That means all 4 major political parties would have had to have known about it and cooperated. Seeing as even arms exports to allies is a senstive political topic, and the extremely pro-US course of the Kohl government, this is very difficult to imagine.

Indeed, if a goverment can be blamed for the illegal actions of business, then the United States is as much to blame, as the second leading illegal supplier to Iraqi weapons programs (according to the leaked Iraqi report to the UN).

No, the illegal exports simply prove once again the econimc truism that boycotts are never effective. If you have the goods, a willing seller, and a willing buyer, a transaction is going to take place, illegal or not, whether the goods are illegal drugs or illegal missile parts. German firms may be particularly amoral, and thus particularly willing to sell, but there is no deeper conclusion to be drawn.

Update Mrs. T says that it's all a plot

A City Learns

2003-03-10T21:03:16+00:00

The Abendblatt on Saturday included an excerpt about Hamburg in 1946, one year after the war, from a special issue of the magazine Geo on "Germany after the War: 1945-1955". Somehow this report on the city in ruins seems very appropriate right now, and not just because of my interest in Hamburg and the Stunde Null.

Gonzo Gardening

2003-03-10T20:03:34+00:00

I don't do garden work. If Mama wants to bring peace and beauty to her little corner of the world, and she benefits from the quiet satisfaction that it brings, well, she's welcome to it. But that's not for me.

I'll do garden work if it's destructive in nature. Mowing the lawn is just slightly destructive. I actually hate it... I suspect Mama keeps planting obstacles in the lawn just to annoy me. Raking leaves, on the other hand, is not destructive at all. It's just pointless, since the leaves keep coming back, until it's late winter, and the remaining leaves from fall are clumped together in a slimy mess. Only then does it make sense to gather leaves, and it's much easier as well.

Compost is a fine destructive activity, although the decomposition of organic material is much too slow to gain any immediate satisfaction from it. In the meantime, it's not just a slimy mess, but a smelly slimy mess infested by various creepy crawly creatures of the night. We used to rigorously deposit our food scraps on the compost pile. We now leave them for the county landfill, along with the rest of our trash. They decompose there just as well.

This past weekend we engaged in an extremely satisfying and destructive garden activity (that doesn't even involve a roto-tiller), namely trimming the wild roses. Wild roses grow like weeds, a meter or two each year, so you can trim them down to the roots and they'll still come back as happy and thorny as ever. So you can pick an arbitrary height (say, 30 cm), trim all branches that extend any higher, plus any others that you don't like the look of. That's the quick, fun part. The slow, tedious part is gathering and cutting up the thorny branches. Since we don't have the ultimate plaything for destructive gardeners, a shredder, we have to cut the branches down to a portable size and haul them away.

Ouch, I see I still have a thorn in one of my knuckles. The roses are still exacting their revenge.

I Fought the Ants but the Ants Won

2003-03-06T05:03:40+00:00

Message to Mama, currently at a conference in Leipzig: ANT POISON NOT WORKING. STOP. SEND REINFORCEMENTS. STOP.

One, Two, Three

2003-03-05T21:03:34+00:00

Call me gruesome, but when I heard yesterday that the actor Horst Buchholz had died, my first thought was the hope that the frantic Billy Wilder comedy One, Two, Three (1961), starring Buchholz and James Cagney, would be televised. Sure enough, it's showing right now on BR.

OK, the film mostly stars Cagney, as a hyperactive Coca-Cola executive in post-war pre-Wall Berlin. For example, he's trying to close a deal with the Russians. They offer him a Cuban cigar.

"We made a deal with Castro. He sends us cigars, we send him missiles."

"You're being cheated! This cigar is badl!"

"So are the missiles."

You'll have to see the movie yourself to know how Cagney "learns umlauts" with his German secretary. Sitzen machen!

The End of Consensus

2003-03-05T05:03:29+00:00

When Gerhard Schröder was first elected Chancellor 5 years ago, the lynchpin of his economic strategy was the Bündnis für Arbeit, or Alliance for Jobs, meetings of top officials from industry and labor moderated by the Chancellor that would reach consensus on the measures needed for economic reform in Germany.

In those five years, the Alliance for Jobs has sputtered off and on, mostly off, as industry and labor accused one another of sabotaging the talks. This winter Schröder tried to revive the Alliance, but after a preliminary meeting Monday he declared the Alliance for Jobs for dead, and that he would present his own proposals for economic reform in an address on March 14.

This may be a significant move by Schröder to move away from the unions and show real leadership, a sign that he is willing to work together with opposition to pull Germany out of its economic crisis. Or it may be just a lot of hot air. But in case the change is for real, it has now begun.

Leave the Church in the Village

2003-03-04T17:03:58+00:00

In a response to Andrew Sullivan, Amiland today reminded that whatever Schröder's policy on Iraq is today, two years ago he put his own government on the line to support Enduring Freedom. That reminded me of the remark by Joshua Micah Marshall a couple of weeks ago that the US routed around NATO when it came to Enduring Freedom, invoking Article V but not asking for anythng of substance. They probably thought at the time that it wasn't worth the bother to wait for the NATO allies. I can't help but think that today there would be a common trans-Atlantic position on Iraq if NATO had been on board in Afghanistan from the start two years ago.

At any rate, I'm wary of Sullivan's broad historical generalization of German foreign policy ("they veer from extreme romantic militarism to romantic pacifism"), since the Federal Republic has only had an foreign policy since November 1989, after going decades without. I don't see the connection to ghosts of the German past.

Today's Headlines

2003-03-03T21:03:21+00:00

Keep in mind that the three big news stories of this weekend were the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the rejection by the Turkish parliament of the deal to allow the US to attack Iraq from Turkey, and the destruction of the first Samoud missiles by Iraq. Here then were the top headlines in this morning's local paper Hamburger Abendblatt:

* Poll disaster for SPD in the North (local elections in Schleswig-Holstein)

* Fall of an Idol (footballer Oliver Kahn admits having affair while wife is pregnant)

* Ja Ja Juliette (semi-finals of 'Deutschland sucht den Superstar', a form of 'American Idol')

For comic relief, a report on private detectives seeking out workers who fake sick was also mentioned on the front page... on Rosenmontag, the highlight of Karneval (which is not celebrated in Hamburg).

Ticket To Vienna

2003-02-28T21:02:24+00:00

I don't really have a proposal ready for my BlogTalk paper on warblogs for Euro-weenies, but since today is the deadline for proposals I threw together what I had and sent it in. I was heartened to see that Jörg Kantel submitted "a bunch of unconnected notes", which I bet I can match in unconnectedness. (Then again he's a keynote speaker, and I was just invited to make a proposal.) I did manage to quote a line from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I'm not sure if I should do the whole thing in a Rocky Horror theme, or just include random film quotes (the scorpion line from Lawrence of Arabia mentioned today on vowe.net would be fitting as well). But I guess the proposal has to be accepted first.

Time Shift

2003-02-28T07:02:06+00:00

Christopher has apparently decided he doesn't like staying up late anymore, and has unilaterally changed his sleep schedule. His routine has now shifted by 90 minutes, so instead of going to sleep at 9 and waking up at 7, he now goes to sleep at 7:30 and wakes up at 5:30. It's like he's now 2 time zones ahead of us, and as you can imagine this has thoroughly confused our morning routine. We've been getting up at 5:30 anyway, so it's not like we're having to get up earlier. It's just that we were used to peace and quiet in the morning. No longer.

You're So Vain

2003-02-26T18:02:32+00:00

Yesterday I left my car at the garage for an inspection and tune-up, and took the bus and train to work. On the way back last night, in the S-Bahn line S3, 4 teenage girls boarded and sat near me, talking and giggling the way teenage girls do, making it impossible not to overhear their conversation. They were wearing headscarves, and they were probably Turkish, but they spoke German. They were making making fun of one of their number whose silk scarf had a crease running from ear to ear. "It's so slippery," she tried to defend herself. "I had to pin it to my hair to keep in from slipping down on my face," and burst into giggles. And I had to smile myself. Wearing a headscarf to be modest doesn't mean you don't care how you look. Especially if you're a teenager.

2003-02-23T21:02:57+00:00

It's probably a sign of my age, or least of when I started taking a interest in German popular culture, that I noticed the 20th anniversary album by Nena, consisting of new versions of most of her '80s hits, and thus entitled 'Nena feat. Nena'. She still has the unique voice I'd follow almost anywhere, and the new version of Leuchtturm is quite good and has gotten some radio airplay, so I impulsively picked up the CD yesterday. 99 Luftballons doesn't cut it as a ballad, the duets with Kim Wilde and Udo Lindenburg are a bit bizarre, and she ruined my favorite Nena song Nur geträumt (but then again, so did Blümchen, or maybe the song isn't as good as I remember). But I'd forgotten how much I liked Fragezeichen, and all in all it's a nice nostalgia trip back to the '80s. To counteract the nostalgia, I also bought the t.A.T.u. album, which is in fact better than I expected, even though I'm too old to be listening to teenie girl groups, even (or especially) if they are from Russia. But then it's produced the old producer of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, so it's really '80s retro. Sigh. There's no escape.

At The Circus

2003-02-23T20:02:40+00:00

Our entertainment today was the Circus Rogall, a small family circus that was playing in Jesteburg. Christopher was skeptical at first, but he did enjoy the clown and the horses, as well as the popcorn. I was impressed by the admission price (double the price of a movie ticket), but also by the versatility of the troupe. Five performers put on the entire show, so the ringmaster was also the clown and the trapeze artist and the horse and camel trainer. Sounds like the life of a sysadmin.

This evening we made pizza together, and Christopher actually did most of the work. He put the flour and water in the mixer, helped roll out the dough, poured on the tomato sauce, arranged the salami, and spread out the grated cheese. He then washed his hands for 20 minutes, which should have made me suspicious. Sure enough, he had spread sun lotion throughout the guest bathroom, on the walls and the fixtures, as well as in his hair.

It's been a fun weekend with Christopher, but I'd still rather have Mama around.

Mr. Christopher Goes To Town

2003-02-22T19:02:39+00:00

The adventure for Christopher and me today was a trip to Hamburg. We parked at Berliner Tor and took the U-Bahn to Landungsbrucken, the gateway to the Hamburg Harbor. There I treated Cristopher to a harbour tour on the Louisiana Star, and we drank capuccino and hot chocolate as we looked at the big container ships. We then went downtown and took a look at the home electronics store Saturn. This was Christopher's first long outing without the buggy, so he walked the entire day and came home exhausted.

German Practice

2003-02-21T19:02:55+00:00

(My apologies for the German posting, but this joke made the rounds on our office E-Mail this morning, and it's better than most. My attempt at a translation is here.)

Ein Ratespiel im Flugzeug

Ein Rechtsanwalt saß im Flugzeug einer Blondine gegenüber, langweilte sich und fragte, ob sie ein lustiges Spiel mit ihm machen wolle. Aber sie war müde und wollte schlafen.

Der Rechtsanwalt gab nicht auf und erklärte, das Spiel sei nicht nur lustig, sondern auch leicht: "Ich stelle eine Frage und wenn Sie die Antwort nicht wissen, zahlen Sie mir 5 EUR und umgekehrt." Die Blonde lehnte ab und stellte den Sitz zum Schlaf zurück.

Der Rechtsanwalt blieb hartnäckig und schlug vor: "O.K., wenn Sie die Antwort nicht wissen, zahlen Sie 5 EUR, aber wenn ich die Antwort nicht weiß, zahle ich Ihnen 500 EUR !" Jetzt stimmte die Blonde zu und der Rechtsanwalt stellte die erste Frage:

"Wie groß ist die Entfernung von der Erde zum Mond?" Die Blonde griff in die Tasche und reichte wortlos 5 EUR rüber. "Danke" sagte der Rechtsanwalt, "jetzt sind Sie dran."

Sie fragte ihn: "Was geht den Berg mit 3 Beinen rauf und kommt mit 4 Beinen runter?" Der Rechtsanwalt war verwirrt, steckte seinen Laptopanschluß ins Bordtelefon, schickte e-mails an seine Mitarbeiter, fragte bei der Staatsbibliothek und bei allen Suchmaschinen im Internet, aber vergebens, keine Antwort. Nach 1 Stunde gab er auf, weckte die Blonde und gab ihr 500 EUR. "Danke" sagte sie und wollte weiter schlafen.

Der frustrierte Rechtsanwalt aber hakte nach und fragte: "Also gut, was ist die Antwort ?"

Wortlos griff die Blondine in die Tasche und gab ihm 5 EUR !

A guessing game on an airplane</p>

A lawyer was sitting next to a blond on an airplane. He was bored, and asked her if she would like to play a fun game. But she was tired and wanted to sleep.

The lawyer did not give up, and explained that the game was not only fun, but easy. 'I ask a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me 5 Euros. Then you ask me a question for 5 Euros." The blond refused and reclined her seat to go to sleep.

The lawyer was stubborn. 'OK, if you don't know the answer, you pay 5 Euros, but if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you 500 Euros!." This time the blond accepted, and the lawyer asked the first question.

"What is the distance from the earth to the moon." The blond reached in her purse and without saying a word paid 5 Euros. "Thank you", said the lawyer, "now it's your turn."

She asked: "What goes up the mountain with 3 legs and comes down with 4 legs?" The lawyer was totally confused, plugged his laptop into the Airfone, sent e-mails to his office, sent queries to the Library of Congress and all search engines, but all in vain. After an hour, he gave up, woke the blond, and gave her 500 Euros. "Thank you," she said, and wanted to go back to sleep.

The frustrated lawyer was persistent and asked, "OK, what is the answer?"

The blond reached in her purse and without saying a word paid 5 Euros!

Long Weekend

2003-02-21T05:02:29+00:00

It's a men's weekend at home. Mama is off to the Alps until Monday for a 'team building' ski holiday organized by her boss, although given her injured ankle and weak knee, the only winter sports she'll be participating in willbe those that require the butt to be firmly planted on the ground. Can one start aprés ski at noon?

Meanwhile, Christopher and I are home alone. Maybe I can slip him off on Oma for a couple of hours on Sunday.

Update Mama sends this photo greeting from their Hütte on the slopes. Looks a lot nicer than the grey skies here up north!

Lost in the Translation

2003-02-19T07:02:39+00:00

Sloppy editing at Deutsche Welle is turning a domestic budget and turf dispute into an international incident. The oppostion is asking the health minister why she is stockpiling smallpox vaccine (and outdated vaccine at that) when the interior minister says there is no threat of a smallpox terrorist attack . DW-World reported

In the interviews, two German government ministers let readers know that there is little danger now that that [sic] American-hating terrorists could unleash the smallpox virus on the German population.

This could imply that a goal of Germany's anti-war policy is to appease terrorists. As Amiland points out, there is nothing in the original interviews that even remotely suggests this. No, this is just domestic politics as usual, nothing to see here.

Then again, as Paul Krugman says (as cited by Tobias Schwarz), maybe the media in Europe and the US are reporting from such completely different perspectives as to make any understanding totally impossible.

Hamburg-Amerika Linie

2003-02-17T20:02:50+00:00

Christopher's favorite picture right now is this poster of the steamship Deutschland, which we have hanging in our hallway for obvious sentimental reasons. Every evening on his way to bed, he has to sit on the stairs for 2 or 3 minutes and admire the big ship, with four smokestacks and an anchor.

The Hamburg-Amerika Linie is today called Hapag-Lloyd, and they still sail ships. And fly tourist jets (although they recently sold the airline to TUI). Christopher would approve of both lines of business.

Duct Tape for Weasels

2003-02-15T18:02:48+00:00

According to this Business Week article (via Ministry of Propaganda), duct tape sales are up 200 to 300% since being recommended by Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge. And the market leader for duct tape in the US is a subsidiary of the German company Henkel. So is anybody calling for a boycott of German duct tape?

Transcontinental Media War

2003-02-13T07:02:34+00:00

Fellow expat Adam Curry wonders how he missed the "growing anti-americanism in Europe". It seems to exist only in the media. I'm not so prominent as Adam, so the media never asked me about it, but I to agree. I have never personally experienced any sort of anti-Americanism at all here in Germany. There's no talk of boycotting trips to the US, or boycotting American products (well, except for Microsoft products :-).

I'm not going to say whether it's good or bad, but Americans seem to be more emotional and sentimental about things, feeling that their friendship has been betrayed. France opposes war with Iraq, and the US media accuses France of being ungrateful for D-Day. I'd guess most Europeans don't see the connection.

There are calls in the US to boycott French wine and Perrier water. Shouldn't they be boycotting Chrysler and T-Mobile as well?

Tobias Schwarz responds that as long as German brass bands can play on American streeets, things can't be all that bad. Although if I were forced to choose between war and Germany Volksmusik, I'd almost choose war.

Discontinued Merchandise

2003-02-12T03:02:52+00:00

The following entry from WorldWideKlein Live, a German journalist based in Washington, DC, is worth translating here in full.

"Before they were impossible to find, now the German embassy is giving them out by the handful: the German-American friendship pins with the German and American flags side by side. These days they're probably no longer needed."

Warblogs for Euro-Weenies

2003-02-11T17:02:44+00:00

I'm now listed at the home page of BlogTalk - A European Weblog-Conference (to be held this May in Vienna) as having submitted a proposal for a talk. That's not quite correct... I've submitted a title and a promise to flesh it out. But I do (in my humble opinion) have a good title: "Warblogs for Euro-Weenies - Searching for the DeutschePundit". Eight words down, one thousand four hundred ninety-two to go.

Since I was always able to ace the essay questions in college, it should be no problem for me to 'Contrast and compare the development of politcal weblogs in Germany and the United States, with particular emphasis on the differences in internet usage, journalistic standards and political culture'.

Speaking of which, can anyone point me to any German political blogs that are CDU/CSU-oriented?

(Weenies. Vienna. Get it? Oh, I am so clever. ;-)

Guillaume Affair

2003-02-10T20:02:27+00:00

Is there a mole in the Chancellor's office? Only an enemy agent could propose releasing to the press a supposed Franco-German plan to send UN peacekeepers to Iraq while the US Defense Secretary is in Germany, without informing the Americans, or the French, or anyone else in NATO, or the Defense Ministry, or the Foreign Ministry, or even Joschka Fischer, or anyone other than the Chancellor himself. And two days later, everyone denies that such a plan ever exisited.

But Germany no longer has any enemies. Who would hate Germany, who would hate Gerhard Schröder so much as to launch such an evil plan. The only one that could hate the Chancellor that much would be.... could be... must be... Oskar Lafontaine!

Unless it were... Rudolf Scharping?

Moving the Chips Eastward

2003-02-09T20:02:47+00:00

I'm glad the Amiland reads the German papers so I don't have to. He mentions a report from the Welt am Sonntag that the US Dept of Defense has halted investment at US bases in Germany, in particular planned construction at the air bases at Ramstein and Sprangdahlen. A hospital planned for Sprangdahlen will likely be built in Hungary.

Even if relations were currently good between Germany and the US, I wouldn't regard moving bases to the east a bad thing. The new NATO members are closer to potential action and can use the help more than the rich Germans. It might give a new purpose to NATO which currently seems directionless, which right now can't even decide how to come to the aid of Turkey in the event of war.

Disclaimer: I live in the former British Occupation Zone, and therefore my local economy would not be affected one iota by an American pullout.

Forty-One

2003-02-09T10:02:56+00:00

As happens year after year, today I turn another year older. We're spending the afternoon baking muffins, since my co-workers will be expecting treats from me tomorrow.

Update It was not really my intent to fish for birthday greetings, but thanks for all the well wishes! In appreciation, here's our muffin recipe (my apologies for the European units).

Mama's Banana-almond-chocolate Muffins
150 g (1-1/2 cups) flour type 405 (all-purpose)
100 g (1-1/4 cups) slivered almonds
2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
1 package vanilla sugar (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
2 eggs
150 g (2/3 cup) softened butter (or margarine)
150 g (2/3 cup) sugar
4 cl (3 tbsp) Amaretto (or 1 vial Amaretto essence)
1 sliced banana
60 g (2 oz.) chocolate flakes

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Mix the flour, almonds, baking powder and vanilla sugar, and set aside. Beat the eggs, sugar and Ameretto until foamy, and slowly add butter. Mix in the flour mixture, then add the banana and chocolate flakes. Fill muffin forms 2/3 full and bake 20-25 minutes. Makes ca. 1 tray.

Undesign

2003-02-06T17:02:24+00:00

I was taken by the new clean design at From the Orient, and I decided to adapt it for myself. Since I hate editing CSS, I really like the fact that the stylesheet is very minimal.

What He Said

2003-02-05T05:02:05+00:00

I'm feeling a bit under the weather, so I'll just point again to Ralf Goergens (who must be very happy about the SPD's recent defeat, since he's been writing a lot lately :-). He explains why that despite Franco-German unilaterialism and the Aznar letter, the EU isn't going to be weakened by the Iraq issue. Because subsidizing cows is too important to be left to politics.

He's also right that the US tends to take the EU much too seriously. Let me try to explain... the EU is just like NAFTA, except with a parliament. And a flag. And a hymn. A very good hymn, I might add, and composed without any EU subsidy at all.

Columbia Lost

2003-02-04T05:02:44+00:00

I haven't mentioned the tragic end of the space shuttle Columbia, since so many others have and I don't have much to add about how I feel, other than what I already wrote about the Challenger anniversary. Christopher is of course too young to understand, and he gets excited when the news shows yet another tape of a shuttle launch, since it shows both a Flugzeug and a Rakete. I'm just happy that there are no pictures of wreckage that he can recognize, then I don't have to explain Flugzeug kaputt, and that there is no way to make it wieder heil.

More Ami Bloggers

2003-02-04T05:02:32+00:00

After assuming for the past three years that I was the only American blogger in Germany, in the past few days I've discovered two others. One is Amiland, by Anonymous (though I'd guess from the content (s)he either writes or translates professionally). The other is Ground Plums & Gun Smoke, by Rick Wallace from the Baumholder Military Community in Rhineland-Pfalz. So Armin Grewe now has couple more entries for his Blogging Abroad page.

Elections in Lower Saxony and Hessen

2003-02-02T19:02:44+00:00

Five years ago, the local elections in Lower Saxony were a resounding landslide for Gerhard Schröder, his crowning as the Chancellor candidate who would eventually defeat Helmut Kohl. Today, the election was a resounding defeat for his successor and protégé Sigmar Gabriel, and a victory for Christian Wulff, the quiet CDU leader who twice lost to Schröder. As a resident of Lower Saxony, I can certainly live with a Premier Wulff.

The CDU has, as expected, won historic victories in Landtag elections Lower Saxony and in Hessen. The Union has over 48% in both states, and may have absolute majorities in one if not both local parliaments. The SPD suffered huge losses, at or near post-war lows. Greens and FDP gained in both states.

Schröder tried to play the Iraq card (he announced his 'no' in the UN Security Council at a campaign rally in Goslar), but voters didn't buy it. For one, the card has been already played, and for another, voters are smart enough to know that foreign policy is made in Berlin, not in Hannover and Wiesbaden.

I disagree with Ralf Goergens that this is the beginning of the end for Schröder. The Bundestag elections are too fresh, and the leftists in the SPD have no alternative. I'm afraid the only way to get rid of Schröder is at the polls in 2006.

I Can't Tell You

2003-02-01T08:02:58+00:00

We had a privacy issue crop up in regards to PapaScott, and I took the archives down until I could think of a good solution. Now they are back up, and I've made a subtle change so that certain people looking for a certain thing won't find it here. I won't tell you what it is. It's a privacy issue.

Put It In A Letter

2003-01-31T05:01:02+00:00

If you want to get involved in grassroot politics, you have to start small. You can join the local branch of a political party, organize petition drives, talk to your neighbors, express your views to your congressman or MP, and write letters to the editor. And maybe, just maybe, you can make a small difference. Unless your name is Aznar, Blair, or Berlusconi, then your letter can make a huge difference.

An issue I almost always raise on my posts on foreign policy is whether Europe matters? The warbloggers say no, but constantly whine about Europe anyway. (Does that make them warwhiners?) Gerhard Schröder said no, and that made it OK for him to use the Iraq crisis for domestic purposes. The French seem to say no, except insofar it can help them reassert their influence in the world and the EU. Donald Rumsfeld's 'old Europe' remarks seemed to imply that he wished Europe would matter more. The Aznar letter is a sound reply that yes, Europe does matter.

Thomas Nephew commented on my small mammal post that "[It seems] like the more important repercussions of the Iraq crisis are the transatlantic ones." I think so, and I think this letter is the first step to clearing things up. The transatlantic partnership is important. Stop. It is too important to abuse for domestic or EU politics. Double stop.

Ding Dong

2003-01-30T20:01:13+00:00

Meanwhile at work, our CEO announced that she is leaving at the end of the month, i.e. tomorrow. I don't want to say that she was unpopular in our department, but someone hung a 'Ding Dong' sign on our door, citing the song from the Wizard of Oz.

Meanwhile, the CTO is taking over for her and we'll have to get by with just two board members for the time being. Just as well, we're cutting costs all over the place and are planning no increase in sales, and are hoping to break even on the year. To put things in perspective, our sales for a year are equal to the sales in Mama's division for two weeks. And most weeks she makes a profit.

Return of Winter

2003-01-30T19:01:20+00:00

Yech. The ice and snow had been gone for 3 weeks, until today. The snow returned, with wind and temperatures near freezing, just in time for evening rush hour. My 60 minute commute from work to day care and home took nearly 3 hours.

Christopher's grandparents will be disappointed to hear that the OshKosh overalls they gave him for Christmas already have a hole worn in the knee. They are the only pants he ever wants to wear, so I guess we will have to find a way to patch them from the inside. He doesn't like patches on the outside.

American Idols

2003-01-30T05:01:30+00:00

After continuously reading the past months in warblogs how Europe no longer matters, I am amused to now see various blogs taking country counts of European countries 'for' (10) and 'against' (5) us. Diplomatic efforts are now furiously underway in Lichtenstein, San Marino, the Vatican, Andorra, and the Grand Duchy of Fenwick to further stack the counts. Maybe we can take call-in votes from the TV audience like at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Meanwhile, is anyone taking count of countries in the Americas? Maybe the Iraq question can be put to the Organization of American States for majority vote. Or to the panel of the latest TV reality series.

Gimp Update

2003-01-29T08:01:11+00:00

Ten days after her injury, Mama is now able to hobble across the room without crutches. She's able to handle Christopher in the morning, so I've gone back to my normal work schedule. She's back at work, staying in the office. We imagine that next week she'll be able to drive again.

All in all she's been a very good patient. I've only had to remind her a couple of times to take it easy. She's gotten good treatment from her next-door neighbor (a physical therapist) and her sister-in-law (a Heilpraktikerin, or nonmedical practitioner). She's only seen her doctor once.

On This Day: Challenger

2003-01-28T20:01:04+00:00

BBC On This Day: 1986: Seven dead in space shuttle disaster. I still know exactly where I was (a bitter-cold parking lot at the U of M in St. Paul) when I heard the news, and I never regained my taste for space travel or science fiction. Thanks to hebig.org for the reminder.

An Axe for the Toolbox

2003-01-28T17:01:43+00:00

I'm unlucky enough to have to maintain internal web servers on a few outdated Linux boxes, with various versions of Red Hat, Suse, and Mandrake. Trying to keep Apache and PHP current on them is a nightmare, since current RPM packages are not available for old distributions. (MSSQL admins learned over the weekend how important it is to keep your servers current.) And I simply do not like the way Mandrake packages Apache (with separate servers with and without mod_perl).

Building my own RPMs would be silly, since I only have one of each box, so I would still have to compile 5 different Apaches. I have been using ApacheToolbox to try to keep things somewhat organized. But compiling a current PHP on an older box with ApacheToolbox is still a nightmare, since 1) it installs PHP as a static module, so updating PHP means updating everything, and 2) PHP gets confused about which libs (system or ApacheToolbox) to link. Given that my boxes are busy with other tasks, trial and error with PHP/Apache compiles takes literally hours.

Today I happened upon a solution. Compile ApacheToolbox without PHP, then compile PHP as a dynamic module with apxs. ApacheToolbox without PHP compiled and installed cleanly on all boxes, and since PHP only looked for system libraries, it was easy to sort them out. I was able to update all my boxes with various PHP extensions before noon.

Doing this under FreeBSD is much easier, thanks to the ports.

Old European Stereotypes

2003-01-26T15:01:04+00:00

In their reporting on the 40th anniversary of the Elysée treaty (and before the Rumsfeld remarks on 'Old Europe'), our local news radio station interviewed people in Paris about their stereotype of Germans. The best answer they saved until the end.

"The typical German is just like the typical Frenchman. They always know better and never listen."

Axis of Small Mammals

2003-01-24T20:01:04+00:00

Sometimes I go through phases where I write more as comments to other blogs than I post for myself. This week this has culminated my being cited by InstaPundit without a link, since lately I don't have anything to link to. Time to fix that. By the way, even though I don't share the sentiment of the Axis of Weasels, I think the phrase is as funny as hell.

When I first heard that Schröder and Chirac had announced their joint intention not to vote for a war resolution in the UN Security Council, I thought it was extremely stupid. Going public means that private talks aren't working and stating your intention in advance greatly inhibits your ability to influence other votes. I could only think that they wanted to prevent such a resolution from coming to a vote at all, or they wanted to extremely irritate Tony Blair. Surely the United States wouldn't even acknowledge such an announcement.

But then Rumsfeld blinked. He called Germany and France 'problems' and 'the Old Europe', and his reaction acknowledged that 'the Old Europe' does indeed make a difference. Maybe Chirac and Schröder had outfoxed Bush after all, blindsiding him by announcing their intentions before the Blix report that Bush has been waiting for. After the Blix report, the US will appear to be proactive by either bowing to the Security Council or by going ahead without them. Either option involves at a minimum a loss of face. That is, if France (and, parenthetically, Germany) really do follow through with their intentions.

I guess it's only stupid if it doesn't work.

Hobble Hobble

2003-01-22T20:01:27+00:00

Mama got an air cast today (not a gel cast like we thought). It's fastened with Velcro, so she can take it off when it gets uncomfortable. She didn't even have to visit the doctor. She just picked it up from the medical supply store. Meanwhile she's able to put just a slight amount of weight on the injured foot. Several folks have commented that it must be extremely painful. It was, but only the first day. Since then, she has been mostly exhausted from all the hopping and sliding.

She's missing a monthly meeting tomorrow, but her colleagues have put their entire IT department in motion to set up a webcam connection for her so she can participate. I know how much IT people love last minute special assignments.

Meanwhile, Oma is helping out by picking up Christopher in the afternoon, so I can work a normal work day. When I get home, I get to chase after both Mama and Christopher, so I end up exhausted as well. Otherwise I'd comment on how Germany and France are joining together push the US out of the United Nations. Why else would they announce now that they will not vote for a war resolution?

Diagnosis T14.3

2003-01-20T21:01:38+00:00

Mama went to the doctor today. The ligament in her ankle is not completely torn, so surgery will not be necessary, but the ankle was still too swollen to apply the gel cast today. She'll get that on Wednesday. Meanwhile she is taking Arthotec for the pain and swelling as well as a set of injections against thrombosis. She can slide up and down the stairs, so she's sleeping upstairs again. She go back to work next week, but probably won't be able to drive for another week after that.

Injured Reserve

2003-01-18T16:01:39+00:00

While hauling leaves out to the woods, Mama stepped into a tractor-tire rut, fell, and tore a ligament in her right ankle. Luckily Christopher was outside, and she sent him to the house to get me. With our neighbors' help, we took her to the local emergency room. There in very uncaring fashion they took x-rays and sent her home with crutches, pain pills, and instructions keep the ankle iced and to visit her doctor on Monday. Our other neighbor is a physical therapist, and she was able to offer massage and some advice in a more caring manner. Remind us to have our next accident away from home.

She will likely be off work at least a week, since she can't drive without her right foot. We'll see how organizing getting Christopher to and from day care will work out.

Back In Touch

2003-01-18T09:01:12+00:00

After 36 hours, the Telekom fixed a bad cable in Jesteburg and we're back in touch with the world. Did anyone miss us? Other than my mother, whose birthday was yesterday when we were unable to call or post. Happy Birthday, a day late!

Sounds of Silence

2003-01-17T14:01:19+00:00

Our ISDN line at home has been down since late last evening. That means no telephone and no internet, and thus no weblog entries. If it doesn't come back up, we may well have a very quiet weekend. Maybe we'll play Scrabble or something.

I Got The Bug

2003-01-15T18:01:16+00:00

Wouldn't you know. As soon as the weather gets warm (above freezing) and Mama's off on her first trip of the year, I get the flu. Nothing serious, the usual headache and sore throat that ibuprofin and pinot grigio can handle in the short run, but enough to come home early. My co-workers don't like working with folks who are infectious. Of course, Christopher doesn't issue sick days, but there's always the Kleine Eisbär to keep him occupied.

No, Alwin, I'm not serious about mixing OTC drugs with alcohol.

To Book or Not To Book

2003-01-13T20:01:36+00:00

I thought the Internet was supposed to make it easy to book a flight.

We're set to meet Christopher's grandparents in Florida the first two weeks of April. We wanted to go in March, but Mama's schedule won't allow it. We'd have liked to spend about €1500 for the three of us to fly, but my queries on Expedia came back with 'fat chance'. April is no longer winter season, and it's too close to Easter. There used to be seats on British Airways for €1300 (with a magic transfer from Gatwick to Heathrow... that would be fun with a 3-year-old), but they were long gone. Our only chance was Delta for €1800.

It's now getting late, and the fares aren't getting any cheaper. On a lark, I thought I'd try Opodo, the portal set up by Lufthansa and some other European airlines. And there was a special Lufthansa online economy tarrif for €1600 that's not listed on Expedia. Lufthansa is good since that's Mama collects miles there for business. (But not for the service, which, especially on domestic flights, leaves much to be desired. She calls Lufthansa Business Class 'the most expensive Brötchen in the world'.)

However, the Opodo website sucks in many ways. It's only usable under Internet Explorer. Under Mozilla the page with the list of available flights is blank. But even under IE it's hard to use. If you hit the back button during a booking, all the data disappears and you have to start over. If you try to login during a booking, all the data disappears and you have to start over. And if you save a itenerary and recall it later, it saves only the search parameters and not the actual flights; in effect all the data disappears and you have to start over.

I was frustrated enough to try to book the flight at Lufthansa's own web site (which, strangely enough for a German carrier, defaults to English). They offer the same special online economy fare, but it is impossible to enter a child as a passenger, or indeed more than 2 adults.

In the end, I wasted 90 minutes of potential Christopher quality time trying to put together a set of flights that I could print out (since I cannot save the flights, only the query) to show to Mama (we need to discuss whether we want quick or leisurely layovers). Then, since my data has disappeared, I'll have to start over to actually book the flights.

I think this is why travel agents will not go out of business.

Oh, for the curious, we'll be flying HAM-FRA-IAD-TPA. Maybe we'll be able to see WorldWideKlein's satellite dish as we fly over.

Buggy Browsers Deux

2003-01-13T05:01:15+00:00

Update: Mark has now found a bug to hide CSS from only Safari. He's not quite correct, of course, since the bug also hides CSS from Konqueror, which also uses KHTML. But then he tested on only devilish operating systems, and not on systems that are good and pure.

Buggy Browsers

2003-01-10T07:01:26+00:00

Mark Pilgrim pleads for buggy browsers. Let him eat Netscape 4. Buggy browsers are never good, and we have enough of them already.

Women and IT

2003-01-09T17:01:36+00:00

BurningBird has been relating the frustrations of being a female Unix expert. Way back in August 2001 there was a discussion of Women in IT, for which I wrote a response that never got imported into my new blog. Maybe some parts are now relevant, so I'll repeat the some of it here.

Scripting News has started a discussion (here and here) about women in the IT industry, why there are so few of them, and wouldn't it be better if there were more. The responses from women that he's posted seem to agree that he doesn't get it. Maybe it's like the joke about what women really want. If you have to ask, you probably can't provide it anyway. Then again, if you never ask, you'll never find out.

The situation in Germany is probably worse, since there are so many factors against working women in general, especially those with children. We've complained about these numerous times here: rare and expensive day care, half-day schools, long maternity leaves, etc.

At my company, of our 8 network administrators, 2 are women, which I think is a unusually high percentage. (One is currently on maternity leave; she plans to come back half-time in January.) Of the 40 or so programmers, currently none are women, although we had two women who left the company last year.

Interestingly, of those 4 women, only one programmer came to the
profession via the Gymnasium->University route. The two admins both took the Realschule->Vocational School track, while the other programmer was a career switcher with training paid for the by the Arbeitsamt (Unemployment Agency). I would guess that 80% of our programmers and admins come from the University.

Secondary education in Germany is traditionally split at the 5th grade into university prep (Gymnasium) and vocational school prep (Realschule and Hauptschule). Both our female admins have told stories of how their teachers tried to steer them away from math and technical courses.

Samhain - File Integrity and Intrusion Detection

2003-01-08T19:01:27+00:00

At work I've been looking at Samhain, a file integrity system similar to AIDE or Tripwire, but with many additional features, like signing of logs and config files, detection of rogue kernel modules, stealth operation, logging to SQL databases, and encrypted client/server communications. It can probably brew coffee, too, but I haven't found it in the docs yet. The configuration is a bit complicated, but it looks promising.

The idea of a file integrity system is not to prevent hackers (or rogue employees) from attacking a system, but to be quickly aware of an attack before the attacker has a chance to cover his tracks. It involves keeping cryptographic signatures of important files so that changes can be detected even if the file size and timestamp remain the same.

Colder Than It Needs To Be

2003-01-08T08:01:52+00:00

We're in a cold wave. -18°C the past two nights, and it will continue until the weekend. That's around 0 for you Fahrenheit fans. Being from Minnesota, I'd call that just 'a bit brisk' (there's no black ice on the pavement yet), but it's still colder than I'd rather deal with. Maybe Hamburg will be able to hold an ice party on the Alster lake this year.

Relative Success

2003-01-08T05:01:30+00:00

I hate editing CSS. I use default stylesheets so I don't have to think about it.

But after receiving a complaint from one of the world's top 5% computer users that PapaScott was unreadable under Mozilla on his Mac, I sprang immediately into action. He's surfing at a font size of 12, which is quite small, and my stylesheet of relative font sizes was slavishly obeying his preferences and rendering 'small' bodytext in anti-aliased Georgia at 10 pts. Which is apparently bad news for anyone who wants to actually read such text.

Since I don't want to lose any readers, much less those in the top 5%, I've dumped the Georgia font and gone to all Verdana, and fiddled some with the font sizes. The sidebar still isn't quite right, and it's all probably way too big for Internet Explorer, so I'll have to check back on those CSS hacks to create smaller settings for IE.

Did I mention that I hate editing CSS?

Snowstreet

2003-01-05T17:01:44+00:00

Our steet, cobblestones covered with snow.

Let It Snow

2003-01-05T08:01:48+00:00

Christopher insists that the fun of having a sled is pulling it, not riding it.

Joining The Gigahertz Generation

2003-01-05T07:01:05+00:00

After two years of working at 900 MHz, I finally went out and bought a new computer. Actually, I didn't, I haven't bought a whole new computer in over 10 years. I only bought a new CPU and motherboard, and the requisite DDR RAM. The RAM cost as much as the CPU and motherboard combined, and was the real reason I waited longer than usual before upgrading. I did follow my usual strategy of a getting a low-end AMD processor that doubles my current speed. Well, at least the marketing speed, since the 1800+ runs at 1533 MHz. I can now build world under FreeBSD in 40 minutes.

I did think about getting a Mac, especially now that I've got a iMac at work. OSX is nice. Too bad it only runs on overpriced proprietary Apple hardware. My OS isn't beholden to an evil monopoly, and my hardware shouldn't be either. I'm sure Steve Jobs would brainwash me to want an entire new Mac every couple of years. He wouldn't let me get by with just a CPU and motherboard. And I could could never push a Mac past the Domestic Financial Planning and Review Council.

Cool and Works Nicely

2003-01-03T19:01:17+00:00

nntp//rss is a Java app that serves RSS feeds as NNTP news articles. That makes at least as much sense as sending yourself RSS entries via email. My first impression is to repeat Martin's reaction. It is cool, and it does work nicely. So can I hack it without having to lean Java?

Five Dollar Bookmarklet

2003-01-02T21:01:36+00:00

About the time my New Year's hangover was starting, Phil Ringnalda had come up with a Five dollar bookmarklet in response to my authoring app post. While hacking the MT bookmarklet is a cool idea, and it's handy to know where to do it, it's not really what I had in mind. Of course, I didn't really say what I had in mind. I just made a throwaway cute comment about a two-bit bookmarklet not expecting anyone to take it seriously.

However, if I were designing the million dollar authoring app, off the top of my head, I would expect it to:

warn me if I were submitting invalid HTML
suggest tags and attributes that my post may be missing
allow me to drag and drop links into my post
check if the links are on my blogroll, and allow me to add them if they are not
check if the links have RSS feeds, and if so allow me to add them to my aggregator
run with the browser and OS of my choice

That's what I was thinking of when I said that a bookmarklet wasn't up to the job. Maybe NetNewsWire Pro, a news aggregator with posting capability, will become something like this, or Radio Userland can be scripted to do it, or maybe it will be an XUL app for Mozilla. Or maybe I'm just dreaming. I don't know.

Grounded By Stupidity

2003-01-02T20:01:22+00:00

I was all set to drive in for my first work day of the new year when I noticed that my left front tire was flat. This would have been a nuisance in any case, but was in fact a huge bother because my spare tire was also flat. I had intended to buy new tires next week. Now I was certainly aware that driving without a spare entails a certain amount of risk, but I must admit that I underestimated the risk of leaving my car parked in the driveway without a spare.

Had Mama not had today off, this would have been a real pain to get fixed. However I was able to load the two flat tires into her car and drive off to the tire shop in Buchholz (which was dead as a doornail at 8 am the morning after New Years). I was back home by 9, mounted the new tires up front using only the jack and lug-nut wrench provided by Renault, and could have been at work by 10:30 had I not decided to spontaneously use a vacation day.

The worst thing is that Mama was bugging me all through December to buy tires already, and now I have to listen to her all through January smugly reminding me that she was right.

Quiet Day

2003-01-01T18:01:38+00:00

We spent New Year's at home with Christopher. We prepared a simple raclett (gouda cheese, not the real stuff) and fascinated Christopher with a Feuerzangenbowle (punch laced with flaming rum-soaked sugar). For the first time ever we bought fireworks that were going to show him, but he pooped out about 10 pm, so we had to wait impatiently until midnight to shoot them off without him. Today we moped around the house, reading (Mama a mystery, Christopher his new airplane book, me a tech book on Cocoon).

Here's wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2003!

I'll kill that cat!

2002-12-31T13:12:15+00:00

Via WorldWideKlein, the Washington Post has an article on the German New Year's Eve tradiition: watching Dinner For One. The Abendblatt has an interview with the original cameraman. It was originally a throwaway scene for a variety show, NDR first showed it for New Year's Eve 10 years later. Today they are running it 5 times: twice in original black and white, twice colorized, and once up platt (in north German dialect).

What do Germans see in a English-language theatre sketch from the 1920s? No one knows. "Maybe it's that our Prussian humor is similar to British humor. But then again, the British don't think it's funny, so maybe it's not British humor after all."

Million Dollar Authoring App

2002-12-31T03:12:49+00:00

I was at first confused by Mark Pilgrim's use of the cite tag, but now that he has clarified that he's not doing it "for the children", but rather just for himself, I can see the point. What I need is a million dollar authoring app so I can keep track of all those million dollar tags I can use. I don't think a two bit bookmarklet is up to the job.

(And is it just me, or does Mark's million dollar markup prevent the Movable Type bookmarklet from working in my two-bit browser? Why, I'm surprised that anyone links to him at all. :-) Update Mark points out that it is just me.

All Wound Up

2002-12-29T21:12:15+00:00

There's nothing like a 3-year-old with a birthday the same week as Christmas to keep things lively around the house between the holidays. And next year I'm sure that we will not invite the relatives to Christmas dinner and again two days later for birthday coffee and cake. It's like a bad case of déjà vu.

And on a completely unrelated note, I hate editing style sheets as well. After unsuccessfully trying to adapt the BlueRobot style from b2, I gave up and dug out my old MT style sheet from September.

Oy Vey, All Ye Faithful

2002-12-26T22:12:55+00:00

Clear Channel Entertainment Purchases Christmas and Hunukkah - Will Merge the Holidays. Does this include the German Second Christmas Day, or Boxing Day as it's called in the Anglo-Saxon world?

Holiday Greetings

2002-12-26T18:12:21+00:00

Chiristopher would like to remind everyone that, while Christmas is a grand holiday, the real festivities begin tomorrow.

Frozen In

2002-12-25T19:12:32+00:00

The ice has only gotten worse. It rained and thawed this afternoon, only to freeze again this evening. Large BMWs with rear-wheel drive are not able to negotiate ice-coated cobblestones, as Mama found out when taking Oma Ruth home. The BMW is now parked at the bottom of our street, waiting for better traction.

All guests were able to make it to the Christmas feast, and more importantly, all were able to make it home safely.

Blitz Ice

2002-12-24T21:12:24+00:00

Severe freezing rain is mucking up the works around here for Christmas. We've had a 1 cm layer of ice covering everything all day long here, and tomorrow promises to be more of the same. We'll see if the whole family can make it in for the big goose feast. But Christopher's happy. He's already scored a ton of train gear, and there's more coming tomorrow, and again on his birthday.

Christmas Garlic

2002-12-23T20:12:27+00:00

Mama is making muffins, but Christopher is more interested in the garlic press. In the interest of all concerned, Papa did not give Christopher any real garlic, but instead created play garlic with flour and water.

Creating an MT Import File from HTML

2002-12-23T14:12:52+00:00

Nico recently trashed his Movable Type database. He had a backup, but it was old (from October), so he was missing about 200 entries. Knowing that I had trashed my database once or twice, he asked me for advice.

200 entries is a bit too much to copy and paste, so I came up with a little perl script to create a MT import file from the HTML files of his individual entries. It's customized for Nico's template, but it might be a useful starting point for others stuck in the same situation.

Nico's template was something like this:
<div><h3>Title</h3>
Post
<a name="more">
More post
</div>

So I was able to look for the title between the h3 tags, the body of the post between the title and the 'more' anchor, the extended entry between the more anchor and the closing div tag, and so on. The category wasn't included, so I had to skip it. You'll need to adjust this logic to fit your template.

The perl is pretty basic. I'm using 'slurp mode' to read in the entire HTML file into a variable, instead of reading the file line by line. I'm also in the habit of using | to delimit my regex, so they look like m|...| instead of the typical /.../. And when you return a regex in a list context, you get a list of the matches $1, $2, etc. So instead of '$content =~ m|...|;$author=$1;', I can put this one a single line as '($author) =($content =~ m|...|);'.

#!/usr/bin/perl # parse.pl - parse HTML files to import into Movable Type # usage: parse.pl *html > output.txt # Note: you _will_ need to adjust the regex and date conversion while (<>) { # for each file on the command line # read in entire file to $content, line feeds and all # using slurp mode { local $/; $content = <>;} # locate the fields we need using regex # some matches may include newlines ($author) =($content =~ m|<div class="posted">s+(.+?)s+/|s); ($title) = ($content =~ m|<h3 class="title">(.+)</h3>|); ($text) = ($content =~ m|</h3>s+(.+)s+<a name="more">|s); ($more) = ($content =~ m|<a name="more">s+(.+)s+</div>|s); ($date) = ($content =~ m|title="updated: (.+)" name="updated"|); # convert the date to MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss $date =~ s|([-d])02|${1}2002|; $date =~ tr|-,|/|d; # printout the fields in the proper format print "AUTHOR: $authorn"; print "TITLE: $titlen"; print "DATE: $date:00n"; print "-----n"; print "BODY:n$textn"; print "-----n"; print "EXTENDED BODY:n$moren"; print "

Shopping List

2002-12-23T06:12:10+00:00

Wine glasses. We have 6, but we need 8. Might as well go to Ikea and get a set.
I'm at Ikea anyway, so pick up a couple of Lack shelves for my brother-in-law.
Goose breast, on special at Minimal, so Mama and I can have a private Christmas dinner on the 26th even if the goose from the 25th is history.
Salami, as long as I'm at Minimal anyway.
Potatoes for baking, for the 24th. We have plenty of regular pototoes, but no big ones.
A sled for Christopher? Probably not, the weather is going to thaw and turn slushy.

Chinese Beetles

2002-12-22T19:12:13+00:00

Josh Allen mentions all the German cars he noticed when visiting China, and Scoble comments on it as well. I'm no Asian business expert, but I do pay attention to the news, and can point out a few random facts.

The German Asia-Pacific Business Association is based in Hamburg and is extremely active developing business contacts in China and elsewhere in Asia. It was founded in 1900. Business relations with China are not a new thing in Germany.

In 1984 Volkswagen signed a 50% 25-year joint venture with China. It was this year extended for an additional 20 years. I believe that the US Big 3 thought that 50% was too little control to be successful.

Hamburg, Germany's largest port, is a sister city with Shanghai, China's largest port. The mayor visits Shanghai annually, with a large business delegation. 230 Chinese firms are located in Hamburg.

In the end, I think German business is successful in China because, at least in regards to China, Germans put business before politics. I don't think Americans would be able to do that.

Backwards Is Forwards

2002-12-21T20:12:15+00:00

It's back to Movable Type. Sometimes stepping backwards is stepping forwards. And, in keeping with PapaScott tradition, I'm keeping the default installed style sheet, at least for now. Just so everyone notices the difference. :-)

Old Wine in New Bottles

2002-12-21T05:12:03+00:00

I sent the following (edited for context) to Steven Den Beste in response to latest posting yesterday on elitist Europeans, a theory I don't think flies very far in the real world.

For someone who thinks that Europe doesn't matter, he sure spends a lot of time grousing about Europe. Maybe the problem is as much an American inferiority complex as it is a Euopean superiority complex.

There is no such thing as EU foreign policy, and there won't be for decades, if ever. The EU does things that are either the lowest common denominator of the member states or that don't matter at all. (I'll let the reader decide which category applies to EU foreign policy.) In the end, as happened once again last week in Copenhagen, the EU does what is decided by the French President and the German Chancellor behind closed doors.

I don't think that theories of elitism apply to the bit of Europe I'm most familiar with. Whatever ideas of aristrocracy survived German unification under Bismarck were lost when the Kaiser abdicated, and utterly destroyed in World War II and 10 years of living in rubble. Blood and upbringing do not matter in modern Germany. Only money.

German political leaders tend to have rather humble backgrounds. Kohl and Stoiber both came from families of low-level civil servents, Merkel was East German physics professor, Fischer was a rock-throwing radical, and Schröder grew up with a single mother in poverty. They came into power not because of who their parents were, or where they studied, but because they very early became involved in (or founded) political parties.

I do agree with Steven on one point. The Europeans who emigrated to America were fundamentally different than those who stayed. But don't think anyone is going to get very far with elitism as a theory of why Europeans are who they are.

iMac, pieMac

2002-12-19T19:12:40+00:00

Confusion reigns at work, but at least I have something to show for it. Among the booty from our closed office in Leipzig is a 700 MHz TFT iMac. Since noone else knows what to do with it, it's sitting on my desk for now. The first thing I did was download NetNewsWire, to find out what all the fuss is about. The next thing I need to do is hack the root password. I need to try out the 'kill 1' trick again.

Patience

2002-12-19T07:12:27+00:00

I'm a patient person. I'll probably wait until all 3 parts of the trilogy are on DVD before I watch the 'Lord of the Rings' movies. That should be in 18 months or so. But to keep up with the hype, I may re-read the books over Christmas.

Stay After School

2002-12-18T11:12:21+00:00

Reuters: Top German Court Blocks Immigration Law, a law Germany needs desparately, because the members of the Bundesrat do not know how to conduct a proper vote. I say they should all get no Christmas vacation until they have read Robert's Rules of Order (or whatever the German equivalent is) cover to cover, have presented a summary in front of the class, and have written 500 times (1000 times for Klaus Wowereit) on the chalkboard 'I will not count split votes as yes.'

US fury over documentary

2002-12-17T21:12:35+00:00

Expatica: US fury over German Afghan documentary "US officials expressed outrage Monday over the decision by a German television network to broadcast a documentary alleging that US troops stood idly by and allowed Northern Alliance troops to massacre Taliban soldiers last year in Afghanistan." The documentary by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran is being shown on ARD tomorrow night. According to Spiegel Online, the documentary has already aired in Britain and Italy, so it seems to be old news. So why does ARD deem it worthy of prime time? And why is the US State Dept complaining only now? Or did they protest the previous showings as well?

Bad Dreams

2002-12-16T06:12:44+00:00

I was planning on taking vacation this week, but then at work we agreed to give back 3 vacation days. So I'm working for nothing this week, and Mama is home alone with Christopher the Wonder Boy.

I had a bad dream about the US Postal Service last night. I'm not ususally so introspective as to blog about my dreams, but I found it interesting that after 12 years of German and European bureaucracy, my bureaucratic nightmares are still American.

Buying Cheese

2002-12-15T08:12:08+00:00

Iowa John tells a story about buying cheese, and deciding between the fancy imported gouda and the ordinary domestic cheddar. I could tell a similar story, except here the cheddar is the fancy imported cheese, and the gouda is the cheap domestec stuff.

The same could go for cars, for Chryslers and BMWs. Well, almost :-).

Tree Killer

2002-12-14T16:12:07+00:00

I was hoping to have been able to tell the entire story of harvesting a Christmas tree from our front yard, but alas, our tree stand is too small, so we'll have to wait until Monday to bring the tree inside.

When we first moved out of the city, Mama used to always bring a small shovel along on our bike rides to "liberate" baby pine trees from the paths at the nearby nature reserve, where they would have been tramped to death by tourists, to be planted in our garden. This tree is the last of those liberated trees. It must be about 8 years old.

Let's Make a Deal!

2002-12-14T06:12:52+00:00

Maybe we can trade Hesse's Premier Roland Koch for US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. We'll even throw in Herta Däubler-Gmelin and a future draft choice.

Christmas Card

2002-12-12T20:12:51+00:00

Christopher is helping with the holiday baking this year. Hopefully he'll help with the clean-up as well!

Merry Christmas from Scott, Mama and Christopher

(Thanks to Scoble for pointing to the card shop at USPS. That's how we're sending this card to my US relatives.)

Packages

2002-12-10T05:12:11+00:00

Chrisopher's Grandparents will be happy to know that both of his Christmas packages, sent from Minnesota on 2 Dec, arrived yesterday, even though one was sent air-mail and the other not. Interestingly, even though they were sent via USPS, they were not delivered by the German Post, but by DHL.

Grinding Away

2002-12-10T02:12:54+00:00

Work has been a grind, as closing up an office 500 km away is a lot more work than just turning out the lights. Projects have to be transferred, equipment accounted for and transported, security schemes dismantled, accounts cancelled. Not to mentioned that it's emotionally draining. The colleagues in Leipzig are being paid until the end of the month, but as of tomorrow their office will be dismantled so they have no place, nor reason, to work.

Meanwhile, in Hamburg, the Betriebsrat held a meeting with us that explained their side of recent events. It looks like next year will continue to be 'interesting'. Management tried to organize a Christmas party at the last minute, but cancelled when it was clear that there was little interest. Meanwhile, we have coffee again. It turns out providing coffee outright is cheaper than renting vending machines that dispense coffee.

(Question for markup gurus: is defining foreign words, as in Betriebsrat, an acceptable use of the <acronym> tag?)

Update Tim says I should do this: <span xml:lang="de" title="kindergarten">Kindergarten<span>. Let's see how it looks: Kindergarten. Hmmm, the tool tip is there, but I'd need to define a style. He's right, that's way too hardcore! ;-)

Further update The default style in Mozilla for <acronym> is { border-bottom: dotted 1px; }. So let's see how <span xml:lang="de" title="kindergarten" style="border-bottom: dotted 1px; font-style: italic;">Kindergarten<span> looks: Kindergarten. Hmmm, that's not too bad.

Advent Calendar at leo.org

2002-12-09T13:12:58+00:00

There's a cute Advent calendar at the leo.org German-English dictionary. No sound, no flash, and the surprises behind the dates aren't all that great. I just like the picture of the 'teddy bear bakery'.

Cold Legs

2002-12-08T20:12:35+00:00

Mama's under the weather, so Christopher and I hiked up to Hamburg for the afternoon to visit the Christmas markets downtown. I decided that we would take the train rather than drive, and thus give Christopher his first ride in a real live Deutsche Bahn train (as opposed to a mere S- or U-Bahn). I had forgotten that it was not only cold but windy (so it was miserable outside at the market), and that there was a soccer match so that the main station was full of HSV fans (so we missed the train I wanted to take home and had to wait an hour for the next one), and that the return train would be packed to the brim with returning weekend travelers (so we had to stand... ever try to get a 3-year-old to stand still for 25 minutes?). In return, the DB never checked our tickets, which I was planning to buy on board, so the trip was relatively inexpensive.

When we got home, Christopher told Mama all about trains for a good half hour. So I guess he enjoyed the trip.

Party Like It's 1968

2002-12-07T14:12:58+00:00

FAZ: Riots on the streets of Hamburg. The war in Iraq or transports of nuclear waste aren't enough to get real fired up about, but the dismantling of a squatter settlement by my favorite Interior Minister Ronald Barnabus Schill has brought rioters into the streets several times the past month. Of course, he's been taunting the rioters in the media, and reportedly had to be restrained by his assistants from showing up personally to inspect the law-enforcement efforts. Now, he has recommended to his fellow interior ministers that Germany obtain the Russian gas used to end the theater siege in Moscow. I hope he realizes that it would be useless against outdoor riots.

Nikolaus comes on Dec 6

2002-12-07T07:12:22+00:00

Yesterday was Nikolaus Day, the morning when St. Nikolaus comes and fills your boots with chocolate (if you've been good), or just a branch (if you've been bad), or both (if you've been in-between). We forgot all about it, so we had no boots out for Christopher. We tried to make up for it by opening up one of his presents last evening, a double-decker train station for his wooden set.

Have I mentioned that all of his presents this year will come from E-Bay? Does that make us evil parents?

Also of note: Christopher used the toilet at home for the first time yesterday! That's no great accomplishment for him, he's been practicing at day care for over a week. It is an milestone for his parents, who finally got him to the bathroom in time. Yes, parents need toilet training, too.

3x365

2002-12-05T04:12:23+00:00

Three years ago a bunch of foolish early-adopters became online beta testers for EditThisPage.com, a strange new service where one could set up and edit a website using only a browser. That was the beginning of PapaScott, as well as a bunch of other weblogs that are still around. An old layout of the first really important PapaScott post is still here. So Happy Birthday to all of us.

PapaScott @ SourceForge

2002-12-04T05:12:33+00:00

It's probably a huge case of hubris on my part, but I've adopted the Linus Torvalds 'backups are for wimps' attitude and started a SourceForge project for my weblogging stuff. I mostly want to use their CVS to keep track of my personal, er, ehancements to b2, but I can keep other miscellaneous scripts there too, like my scripts to convert Manila to XML to Movable Type.

Everybody's Darling

2002-12-03T05:12:03+00:00

Our youngest cat, Karl-Heinz, died in his sleep this morning. He was 16 years old. He was Mama's cat, like Helga was my cat, and Mausi is our cat. I thought he was selfish and manipulative, even for a cat. He was cute and he knew it, and he knew how to use it. He was shy and didn't come out for company, but was the immediate favorite of everyone who met him.

He came from a troubled home in Minneapolis. His name when we got him was 'Twisted Sister', and my first experience when we tried to take him home was that he bit me, through my hand, so hard that I fainted. When we finally got him home, he hid in our basement for weeks. It took literally years for his personality to become somewhat normal.

The Den Beste Exception

2002-12-01T21:12:41+00:00

In the category 'things that are much more difficult than they seem', USS Clueless is now listed with a last-updated time in my blogroll. Actually, after I figured out how to extract the latest 'Stardate' from his main page, yesterday Steven started posting an RSS feed. So it's now fairly easy.

Crazy Cousins

2002-12-01T10:12:20+00:00

I promised Christopher's cousins yesterday that I would post their picture on the Internet, and that they would become famous. Well, I can fulfil the first promise anyway. From left to right, Lennart, Jakob, Freya and Mareike

Counting with Christopher

2002-11-26T21:11:50+00:00

Eins-Vier-Fünf-Sechs-Neun-Sechs-Acht (One-Four-Five-Six-Nine-Six-Eight)

OK, so he's not a genius. Yet. But it's an improvement from a couple months ago, when everything more than two was Dreizehn-Neunzehn (Thirteen-Nineteen).

Muffin Man

2002-11-25T05:11:22+00:00

After an experience with small children in a crowded restaurant, Dorothea says she doesn't care about my kid. Well, I don't care about her peace and quiet in a public place. I guess that makes us even. Maybe she'd prefer that Christopher stay home and bake muffins. Well, then.

5 Hours for a Lampshade

2002-11-24T07:11:42+00:00

Mama returned from her excursion to Munich yesterday. Even though she has a more than functional company car, she wanted Christopher and I to pick her up from the airport. Why? Her car was at the office (taxi fare to the airport is cheaper than parking), but she wanted to swing by Ikea to pick up a replacement lampshade. Then we would drive her across town to her car. This didn't seem to me to be an efficient use of time, but I agreed anyway. Afterwards, I figured this little adventure cost me 5 hours of free time, which explains why I'm still tired today. But Christopher enjoyed the trip to the airport.

Update While cleaning the living room, Mama knocked the lamp over and broke the new lampshade, after barely 24 hours. Since the lamp had been shadeless for well over a year, I guess that means we'll get the next new lampshade in Spring 2004.

Every Day in Every Way

2002-11-22T22:11:54+00:00

Sorry, I've been paying more attention to my blogroll than to my blog today. I'll post details later, but just note that the blogroll now combines update data from both blo.gs and blogrollings, as well as HTTP headers for a few selected sites. So there are just two sites left for which I don't have update times. But they, too, will fall.

Third Thursday in November

2002-11-21T15:11:29+00:00

Today is the third Thursday of November. That means it's Beaujolais Nouveau day. Here it's called Beujolais Primeur. Whatever you call it, it's fresh French decadence for just €1.49.

Some Guys Have All The Luck

2002-11-21T05:11:44+00:00

Maybe I should just get used to the fact that every time Mama goes on a business trip, some sort of disaster strikes. This time it's a failure of day care coordination. The original failed (our Tagesmütter is at a conference), the backup failed (she forgot to inform her substitute that we were coming), and the backup of the backup failed (the substitute is leaving on vacation today). And the tape in the vault is missing (Oma is out of town). And there is no Plan D. So I'm burning a vacation day today with Christopher. At least it's Mama's last trip for the fall, and she won't have another big trip until March.

Generic Links

2002-11-19T21:11:05+00:00

As I threatened to do a couple of days ago, I've converted all the internal links to a generic /YYYY/MM/DD format. The individual posts have .html endings for easier reading, but since the file ending is ignored it doesn't affect anything. https://www.papascott.de/2002/11/18/1991.swf will work as well, or even https://www.papascott.de/2002/11/18/1991.doc.

b2 was fairly cooperative with all of this. In index.php, the individual link is now <a href="<?php the_time('/Y/m/d/');the_id(); ?>.html">. b2archives.php had to be adjusted to output the new monthly archive links. The *_popup_link functions output relative links that are now wrong in the archive pages. I had to adjust them to add a slash at the beginning of the href. Just for fun, I made the date headline into a link to a daily archive. That function is now really ugly: <?php the_date('/Y/m/d/"><h2>d.m.y','<a href="',"</h2></a>");

The RewriteRules are the as before, except that each [R,L] has been replaced with an [L], i.e. the link is not redirected to the rewritten link. And of course, the old index.php?p=blah&more=1&c=1 links still work as well.

Klappe!

2002-11-19T19:11:40+00:00

Christopher is playing with his Lego trains, and he is telling me 'Klappe!', which means 'Shut up!', as in Halt die Klappe! I'm thinking, what kind of words is he learning at day care anyway? Then Mama explains he means the actual meaning of the noun, as in a flap, latch or valve. He means the switch on the Lego tracks. I need to turn it so the train can pass. I guess a switch can be a latch laying on its side. Sorry Christopher, I didn't mean to assume that you were being inpolite.

News Flash - Politicians are Liars!

2002-11-19T17:11:14+00:00

Spiegel Online reports on the Union plan to form a Bundestag special committee to investigate whether SPD/Green candidates lied about expected tax revenue during this fall's election campaign. How stupid does the Union think the voters are? This just goes to show that the Union has no constructive ideas of its own. Of course politicians are liars! All Angela Merkel has to do is ask her old boss Helmut Kohl about reunification and 'blooming landscapes' and 'noone will be worse off'. Then again, Kohl has a history of stonewalling Bundestag special committees.

Update 05.12.02 Greeting to readers from suburban Tennessee! Yes, the Union is still going ahead with its special committee, and Finance Minister Eichel has promised to give as good as he gets (as in, how did Stoiber intend to pay for his &eruo;70 billion of campaign promises). So let the mud slinging begin again, although I would rather have an opposition that would, uh, propose some constructive alternative policy?

Kite Socks

2002-11-19T05:11:11+00:00

Christopher is very picky about his clothes. He always has been, but lately it has been extreme. He has to have an undershirt, a white, sleeveless undershirt. He has to have overalls, with pockets, they are his 'railroad pants'. And he has to have his kite socks, of which we only have one pair. We have to trick Christopher to be able to wash them, or wait until he is asleep. That's why the first thing Mama said when I woke up this morning was "I can't find the kite socks." They were on the radiator in the bathroom. I had put them there to dry.

2002-11-18T20:11:18+00:00

Like Nico, I rather like this week's cover of Der Spiegel. Lately Schröder has been acting like a politician from the previous century, so maybe the picture fits.

Speaking of Spiegel, vowe points to a commentary there entitled 'Green Sense, Red Nonsense', that contends that the Greens are the only party making economic sense these days, while the SPD is only concerned with not irritating its lobby groups.

For those keeping score, the latest 'Sunday Question' poll puts the SPD at 30%, CDU 48%, Greens 10%, FDP under 5%. Of course, the problem with the Sunday Question is that everyone knows there really isn't an election this Sunday. Only every four years.

Don't Dress Your Kids Like This

2002-11-18T18:11:52+00:00

DW World Court Passes Sentence on "Suicide-Bomber's" Father "Berlin court gives suspended sentence to father who dressed his three children up as suicide bombers at an April demonstration." The 33 year old Palestinian asylum seeker was charged with 'public endorsement of a criminal act, and in addition to 5 months suspended must serve 300 hours community service. He may face deportation. In April photos of the children with fake dynamite sticks caused a worldwide uproar.

Blind Dates

2002-11-18T04:11:16+00:00

Now that I can do rewrites in my .htaccess file, I'm now redirecting date-based URLs to the appropriate b2 page. That means, for instace, that https://www.papascott.de/2002/11 takes you to the monthly archive for November 2002. Before I was using hundreds of .php files generated by Movable Type, since my old hoster only allowed .htaccess files in certain directories.

This is just an interim step. I eventually want b2 to produce these URLs itself.

RewriteEngine on
# give full URL on redirects, otherwise we land at papascott.de (w/o www)
# rewrite date-based URLs to b2 calls ... they all begin with [0-9]+/
# any number following a # is an individual post
RewriteRule ^(0-9)+/.+#([0-9]+)$ 
    http://%{HTTP_HOST}/index.php?p=$1&more=1&c=1 [R,L]
# YYYY/MM/DD/PPPP individual post
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)  
    http://%{HTTP_HOST}/index.php?p=$4&more=1&c=1 [R,L]
# YYYY/MM/DD daily archive
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+) 
    http://%{HTTP_HOST}/index.php?m=$1$2$3 [R,L]
# YYYY/MM monthly archive
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)/([0-9]+) 
    http://%{HTTP_HOST}/index.php?m=$1$2 [R,L]
# YYYY go to YYYY/01 monthly archive
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/*$ 
    http://%{HTTP_HOST}/index.php?m=$101 [R,L]
# any other number, pass as is
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)/*$ 
    http://%{HTTP_HOST}/index.php?m=$1 [R,L]

Happy Sunday

2002-11-17T16:11:10+00:00

The New Number Two

2002-11-16T17:11:43+00:00

Garrett reminded me and Karl of The Prisoner, which I haven't seen in ages (not since I've been in Germany, I've never heard it mentioned here.) Back when I was in high school, the local public TV station would broadcast it Sunday nights right after Monty Python. Extremely appropriate. And I see the complete series is available on DVD.

Hour of Truth

2002-11-15T18:11:51+00:00

Today my employer announced further cost cutting measures effective January 1, despite the voluntary cuts in vacation and pay we agreed to last month. We are closing the development center in Leipzig, laying off all 22 employees and dropping our mobile finance and HBCI lines that were developed there, and laying off an additional 5 employees in Hamburg. We'll be down to 110 employees, less than half that of two years ago, when we had offices in Singapore, New York, and Johannesburg. Now we have just Hamburg. My job is safe for now. We'll see in 6 months.

Springsteen Kommt

2002-11-15T18:11:13+00:00

Abendblatt: Springsteen kommt! 2 June 2003, AOL Arena, Hamburg. Our calendar is marked.

Wha Happened?

2002-11-15T05:11:42+00:00

A couple people missed me at the usual address. That's nice.

For German .de domains there is no evil Network Solutions/Verisign monopoly. There is a central registrar DENIC, but as an end-user you deal with your provider or hoster. I moved papascott.de to a hoster in the US, and they are obviously not a DENIC member, so I had to find a domain-only provider. I've used one in the past, without any problems, but I thought I'd try someone new that was a bit less expensive and with online domain administration and a free basic DNS (only one A record, but that's all I need).

Apparently they recycled my paperwork, and after having set up my domain on Saturday, they set it up again on Wednesday, erasing my previous settings (and my A record). papascott.de then resolved to their redirect server. I was able to correct the A record immediately when I saw the error, but their DNS has a TTL of 24 hours, meaning that everyone who had received the bad address wouldn't get the correct address for 24 hours. In the meantime I set up a series of redirects that send the bad address to the temporary domain.

All of this would have been catastrophic if I would actually post anything of value here. As it was, the damage was minimal. And I could have avoided all this by using a real DNS hoster, even though they cost extra.

My Domain Got Farked!

2002-11-14T05:11:34+00:00

The good folks at united domains managed to reset their records for 'papascott.de' yesterday, thereby erasing my DNS entry. I've reentered the correct IP address, but it will take 24 hours for the correction to take. Arghhhhh!

Elected is elected, you can't fire me now

2002-11-13T20:11:51+00:00

After the The Ketchup Song (like the Macarena, only the lyrics are nonsense), we now have Der Steuersong "The Tax Song" by a Schröder imitator, except the lyrics are not nonsense, but bitter reality.

I'm raising all your taxes
Elected is elected, you can't fire me now
That's what's cool* about democracy

*The German text, 'das ist ja das Geile an der Demokratie', is just slightly vulgar. 'Horny' would be a better translation for 'geil', but 'horny for democracy' makes no sense in English, even if we do speak of 'lust for power'.

On The Cover of the Rolling Stone

2002-11-13T05:11:58+00:00

Yo, still here. Christopher is home sick, and while Oma has been able to stay with him it still throws a stick into the spokes of our schedule. Plus this is the week of reckoning at work, as the dreaded 6-weeks-before-the-end-of-the-quarter deadline for terminating employment contracts looms. An all company meeting is set for Friday. The rumors are flying, since everyone knows we haven't landed any new contracts, and I remain cautiously pessimistic. Mama's employer isn't doing that well either, but since it is a Dow Jones company everyone hears about their problems. So she's busy cutting costs too.

Meanwhile, Mama was pictured last week in the Bild Zeitung. No, not as a Bild Girl, but together with her boss as a promo for her employer. And only in the Hannover edition.

RSS Uproar

2002-11-10T08:11:16+00:00

Some people get quite passionate about RSS. I don't, I just want to provide usable feeds. The b2 upgrade produces 3 flavors of RSS, and thanks to mod_rewrite I can now direct all old links to the new files. Meanwhile, Horst Prillinger (who for all I know, might not even be a man), will be happy to know that the feeds no longer include raw URLs, which apparently Radio Userland does not handle gracefully.

In other news, Pete Prodoehl has produced a nice template, er skin for AmphetaDesk. My main wish for AmphetaDesk would be to tell it not to include images. The secret is probably in the template code.

New Home

2002-11-09T13:11:59+00:00

PapaScott has moved. Hopefully you didn't even notice. But it will take until Sunday morning for everyone's DNS to catch up. If you're reading this, you're at the new address. Welcome aboard.

Here at the new place we have the new version of b2 installed, with various improvements that are mostly invisible to the naked eye. And now that I can put .htaccess settings wherever I want, I'm going to do something about those unreadable 'index.php?blah=foo&bluh=bar' URLs. I hope.

Separated at Birth

2002-11-08T21:11:27+00:00

In looking for something else at Google news, I ran into this article at The Globalist claiming that Schröder and Bush are Political Brothers in Arms, and that Bush could end up with as big a post-election hangover as Schröder has. It also claims that Daschle and Stoiber both lost for the same reason.

Visionary of German journalism

2002-11-08T04:11:15+00:00

Faz.Net: Visionary of German journalism dies at 79. Ruldof Augstein was founder of the news magazine Der Spiegel. As a journalist he not only reported on public life, he helped shape it. He spent over 3 months in jail in his battle with Franz-Josef Strauss and Konrad Adenauer over press freedom in the 'Spiegel Affair'. In the end he won, Strauss resigned, and Adenauer left office. He was an active member of the Free Democrats, and was even elected to the Bundestag in 1972, but stayed only 3 months. He was an active support of Willi Brandt's Ostpolitik, And he leaves behind a magazine that is both journalistically and financially sound.

Rock'n'Roll Realschule

2002-11-07T21:11:21+00:00

Luckily I noticed at dekaf last week that the best band in the world was releasing their new album, Rock'n'Roll Realschule, an MTV Unplugged concert. And this evening I finally caught the 5th or 6th TV repeat of the concert at the Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium in Hamburg. Let's just say that after the Pisa Study, my faith in German education has been restored. (And for my American readers, Die Ärzte are a punk band, and recorded their unplugged concert at a prep school, in school uniforms, backed by the school orchestra and choir, who provided the necessary volume.)

English Week

2002-11-07T05:11:33+00:00

Mama's away again for 3 days, so I'm doing an 'English week' with Christopher. Last night her employer opened its first European partner brand location in Munich, a concept she hopes to bring here up north. So you could say she flew to Munich for pizza. She gets back Friday, but has some charity/community function in Hamburg that night, so she won't see Christopher and I awake until Saturday morning.

('English week' is a German sports term. English soccer teams usually play twice a week, while German teams usually play just once, on the weekend. When a German team does have a midweek match, they call it an English week.)

2002-11-06T19:11:16+00:00

An email to Glenn Reynolds asks "I wonder if German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has placed a congratulatory call to President Bush yet?". Actually, according to Spiegel Online, he has. Or at least he intends to. I guess the real question is, will President Bush bother to pick up the phone when he sees who is calling?

Update Here's a quick English summary of the Spiegel article: Schröder wants to congratulate Bush, in spite of everything. Schröder's press secretary announced that Schröder wanted to congratulate Bush as soon as the final results are in. He didn't want to speculate whether Bush would belatedly congratulate Schröder on his victory in September. "Of course the Chancellor will congratulate the President in the appropriate way." The Foreign Office explained that the Republican victory would have no effect on relations with the US.

Deep Dark Links

2002-11-06T08:11:25+00:00

OK, 60% of the vote has been counted, and Mondale hasn't quite lost the Minnesota Senate race yet, so I still have time to tell my Mondale story. In our Minneapolis days, in 1985 or so, I was working weekend nights at the radio room at StarTribune: Newspaper of the Known Universe. My job was to listen to police radio and wake up a photographer if anything interesting happened. (Note that I was not to wake up a reporter. Words can be written after the fact.) Anyway, one boring night I was looking through the desk drawer, and discovered hundreds of xeroxed address labels, all with the same address. Walter Mondale's law firm in Washington. I have no idea what the news room was regularly sending to Walter Mondale... it certainly wasn't his newspaper subscription. I imagine there was some deep dark link between the paper and the politician. I have a vivid imagination.

Website Boy

2002-11-05T18:11:07+00:00

After gracing the pages of the magazine of the national Tagesmütter association, Christopher is now doing online advertising for the state association for Niedersachsen. Well, he's being used for space-filling decoration, anyway. Gratis.

Vote For Me

2002-11-05T07:11:11+00:00

Election Day in the US today, for those who've been in a cave the past few weeks. I didn't think to request an absentee (er, I mean 'early voting') ballot until it was too late. Could one of my readers in the States please cast an extra ballot for me? I'll trust your judgement on who you vote for, just let me know who they were. Thanks!

Where Was Everybody?

2002-11-04T19:11:07+00:00

My blogroll was going crazy over the weekend. Blogrolling was getting stale data from from blo.gs, and kept backdating the some of the links. And I thought everyone was just taking the weekend off.

Islamic party wins in Turkey

2002-11-03T19:11:40+00:00

CNN.com: Islamic-roots party wins in Turkey It's not surpising that the Islamic 'Justice and Development' party finished first, but it is a surprise that they will have an absolute majority in the Turkish parliament. We'll have to see what effect this has on the main foreign policy issues in Turkey, namely the application for EU membership, cooperation with the IMF, and cooperation with the US in possible military action against Iraq.

Terror Begins At Home

2002-11-02T12:11:35+00:00

Spiegel Online: Atta-Gruppe plante offenbar Attentat auf Hamburger US-Konsulat (Atta group planned attack on US consulate in Hamburg). This was in 1998, before they had trained in Afghanistan or had taken any flying lessons. They decided that security at the consulate was too tight, though, and dropped their plans, all this according to Mohammed Haydar Zammar, being held in Syria. Spiegel also has a nice picture of the consulate. That's the same armoured vehicle that accompanied Christopher and me last month when we applied for his passport.

One Of Us Now

2002-11-02T10:11:09+00:00

I'm not particularly patriotic, but it wasn't without a small amount of pride that I picked up Christopher's US passport today.

Yes, that child looks very skeptical. As an added bonus, he also got a certificate to prove his citizenship.

Sweet or Sour!

2002-10-31T20:10:37+00:00

For the first time we've had trick-or-treaters come to the house in Lüllau, 2 groups of girls. I think they were confusing Halloween with Pentecost, since both groups sang at the door. Of course we didn't have any candy, but they were satisfied with coins. Judging from the decorations at the shops and restaurants, it looks like the holiday is catching on more and more in Germany. Süßes oder Saueres!

Who's On First?

2002-10-31T20:10:10+00:00

Mama and I have to coordinate our schedules pretty closely. Actually, I need to coordinate to her schedule, since my schedule doesn't change much. I knew her boss was in town Tuesday and Wednesday this week, but Mama could still wake Christopher on Wednesday. And she could pick him up after work on Thursday, today.

So this morning when I woke up, I was somewhat surprised to find her alarm turned off and that she was already up. And dressed. And gone.

Good thing I noticed she was gone, since often during the week we don't see each other in the morning. Otherwise I would have driven off, and Christopher would have played trains all day long alone at home.

Turns out she had an early meeting this morning, but could come home early this afternoon. She was so happy that she could cover for me in the afternoon that she forgot to say that I had to take her shift in the morning. I was a bit angry at first, but since I'm the flexible one, and not the breadwinner one, I grudgingly woke Christopher, brought him to his Tagesmutter, got stuck in traffic on the way to the city, and got to work 2 hours later than I had planned.

Gentoo Linux

2002-10-30T21:10:46+00:00

After reading the article Gentoo Linux Reloaded, I decided to give Gentoo Linux a try, despite the bad experiences of some that I have read about. The portage system, baed on FreeBSD ports, sounds good, and this could finally be a maintainable source-based Linux system. Even if you have an install CD, there's still a lot to download, since the sources are not on the CD (I cheated and did a test install at work, then burned a CD with the distfiles). But even though you no longer have to compile your own compiler when installing, you still have to compile your own kernel. And they don't let you copy the kernel from the install CD. I guess that would be cheating. I haven't compiled a Linux kernel from scratch in many moons, we'll see how many tries it takes to get something that boots. My test install at work didn't boot, but it was under VMWare so maybe it was doomed to fail anyway. Update In the time it took to write this post, the kernel finished compiling and worked on the first try. However, grub took two tries to work correctly. But now my Gentoo is happily updating itself.

Cold Shoulder

2002-10-30T18:10:54+00:00

washingtonpost.com: Top German Diplomat Visits U.S., but noone in Washington will notice. There's an election going on, after all!

Tunnel Vision

2002-10-29T21:10:14+00:00

Hamburger Abendblatt: 500 000 Hamburger guckten in die Röhre. They were expecting 100,000 to come see the new Elbtunnel. It turned out to be 500,000, and it was absolute chaos as the shuttle buses and ferries were unable to keep up, And even today, with the new tube open for traffic, there was still 18 km backed up for morning rush hour, since there are still only 2 lanes free in each direction. And the impatient try their luck with the Elbe Bridge, which was then backed up for 12 km. That's where I was stuck, which I only mention because after crawling in traffic for over an hour this morning, I mistimed a red light downtown. In the intersection saw the flash of the cameras on both sides of my car after it turned red. I can only hope that I was within the 2 second tolerance, or that the cameras were out of film. Or both.

Up All Night with Jeanett

2002-10-28T19:10:45+00:00

Storm Jeanett blew all night, up to 180 km/h, and wrecked havoc throughout Germany. Some people were hours late getting home with the train. Others, like us, lost sleep because of all the noise, although not as much noise as the tree falling on this house in Thuringen, I'm sure.

Only 117

2002-10-28T05:10:32+00:00

BBC: Moscow siege gas mystery unresolved. The number of dead hostages seems to have stabilized at 117, but then it's still early in Moscow. When this started amd I was dreading the outcome, I was afraid that over a hundred hostages would die. In that sense my fears were realized. But this is still a good outcome. The Russians were right to do something rather than to do nothing. Those 'black widows' came to Moscow to die, but they never dreamed that they would die in their sleep.

Some are saying that Putin was right. As far as I know, Putin wasn't even consulted the morning of the raid. That might be because the decision to take action had already been taken the night before. But all I know is what I see in the news.

Snake Catcher

2002-10-27T09:10:59+00:00

Christopher showing off part of his Ikea booty from yesterday, a play carpet and a 2.5 m long stuffed rattlesnake named Giftig.

Elbtunnel Party

2002-10-26T21:10:04+00:00

The 6-lane autobahn tunnel under the Elbe River in Hamburg was opened in 1975. It was designed for a maximum daily traffic volume of 75,000 cars. The current traffic on an average weekday is 120,000 cars. So you can imagine that most drivers are trilled that the 4th tube with 2 additional lanes will be opened to traffic on Monday. But first, on Sunday, the 4th tube will be opened to foot traffic as a huge Volksfest, complete with food stands and music. Organizers expect 100,000 visitors. There's no place for them to park, of course. They will have to drive to the AOL Arena and take shuttle buses to the tunnel.

I guess I can think of better things to do on a Sunday than to walk through a tunnel with 100,000 fellow citizens, even if is raining cats and dogs like it did today. And I don't expect the traffic situation to clear up right away. Now that the 4th tube is done, the reminaing 3 tubes will be closed for renovation, one at a time, so that all 4 tubes will not be open simultaneously until Fall 2003.

Only 67

2002-10-26T15:10:59+00:00

Reuters: Raid Ends Moscow Theater Siege, 67 Hostages Die. That's probably the best result one could have hoped for, given that previous hostage takings by Chechen terrorists and rescue efforts by Russian special forces had resulted in death tolls in the hundreds. Update ZDF now speaks of 90 hostages killed, over 350 in hospital, and called the chemical used by the special forces 'nerve gas'.

There have been a number of links back to me on this subject. Hey, all I did was watch and listen to the news. I'm no expert on Russia. I've never been to Russia and speak no Russian. I also seem to have been a bit misunderstood. I did not wonder why noone had blogged the subject. I simply noted the fact that I hadn't seen anything about it yet. And sometimes silence can say a great deal.

Hostage Drama in Moscow: Fighting Breaks Out

2002-10-26T03:10:23+00:00

Spiegel Online is reporting that fighting has broken out between special forces and the hostage takers outside the theatre in Moscow, and that some hostages are managing to escape in the confusion. The situation seems just as desparate as I feared yesterday. Last night German TV (well, at least ZDF) was again full of long special reports on the crisis, while the sniper in the US was mentioned 'only' as a report during the normal newscast. But then Moscow is closer than Washington, and there's no ocean in between. And the US has seemed to have solved the sniper problem, while in Moscow there is no solution in sight. Or perhaps even possible.

Update Russian special forces have apparently taken control of the theatre, killing the leader of the terrorists: AP, Reuters. While there are bodies being carried out, it seems most of the hostages have survived.

Senator Wellstone killed in plane crash

2002-10-25T19:10:15+00:00

Pioneer Press: Sen. Paul Wellstone killed in plane crash. I was an active DFLer in my Minneapolis days, but left Minnesota before Wellstone was first elected. I never really knew him, and my voting home is now Arizona, but I thought it appropriate that my old home state had a senator more liberal than the other 99 put together.

Moscow Siege

2002-10-25T04:10:44+00:00

Of all the blogs I read, I found only one mention of the siege at the Moscow theater. It was Glenn Reynolds saying this isn't getting the attention it deserves, but not going any further. For what it's worth, the German media is giving it 10 times more attention than the arrest of Mr. Mohammed. This is Bali times 3 in slow motion, and none of the terrorism or Russia experts I saw had any hope of a peaceful solution. None.

Where's The Kite?

2002-10-23T13:10:49+00:00

More kite pictures from last Sunday...

Down and Out

2002-10-22T18:10:05+00:00

I got kicked in the gut this morning by some nasty gastro-intestinal bug (luckily more gastro than intestinal, I'll spare the technicolor details), so I won't be doing much for the next day or two. Except staying flat on my back.

An RSS Validator

2002-10-22T06:10:06+00:00

An RSS Validator. By Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby. Mine validates. Does yours?

Tomorrow Calling

2002-10-22T03:10:34+00:00

It's not very reassuring to work for a German financial software company when magazines like The Economist (pay only) and Der Spiegel (cover story) (cover free, story pay only), and even the local Hamburger Abendblatt carry stories on the 'German Banking Crisis', and how the first reaction of the banks is to cut back on IT spending. The Economist article is especially good, since it points out how special treatment for Sparkassen (savings banks) skews the whole domestic banking sector. Most of our customers are Sparkassen (or their IT outsourcers), with the notable exception of the Postbank, yet another special case in the banking market.

Meanwhile, the preliminary results are in, and it looks like that 90% of my co-workers did indeed agree to the pay and vacation reduction for this quarter. I guess many, like me, waited until the last minute. So management got what they wanted, we'll see what happens. I'm cautiously pessimistc. And yesterday we brewed the last of the company-provided coffee. We have to organize our own from now on.

How to redirect an RSS feed

2002-10-21T15:10:13+00:00

Radio Userland: Bootstrap: How to redirect an RSS feed. OK, I'll try it. Dave says it's only supported by Radio Userland, but I was able to create mine with vi.

Berlin Polices The Internet

2002-10-21T03:10:19+00:00

The Berlin Police does not want you to see this graphic, a parody of a 'wanted' poster depicting alledged acts of police brutality on May Day. As reported by Der Schockwellenreiter and Heise, the police threatened to shut down the website of the creators of the parody, the Anitfascist Action Berlin, unless the posters was pulled from their website. The police have now started issuing similar threats to sites mirroring the poster, and Der Schockwellenreiter has called on bloggers everywhere to mirror the poster to render the censorship efforts absurd. Now, I find the poster in questionable taste, as well as the whole 'tradition' of May Day rioting, but I should be able to view the poster myself and make my own decision.

Electoral Shift

2002-10-20T20:10:17+00:00

A couple days ago, Stefan Sharkansky responded to Victor Davis Hanson's post-mortum on the German election with the following: "The election was close, but it was a regional victory. Schroeder won in the former Communist East. The more pro-American Stoiber won among America's allies of more than 5 decades in the West...."

I wouldn't overestimate the influence of the eastern states, with just 18% of the electorate. Yes, the 5 eastern states overwhelmingly supported the SPD (39.2% to 29.0%) while the west favored the Union (40.6% to 37.9%). However, the Union won just 3 of 11 western states. Stoiber's majority in the west came from his landslide in Bavaria (42.2% to 33.1%). If Bavaria is excluded, the SPD handily won the 'rest of the west' (40.8% to 36.4%). The north-south divide is just as pronounced as east-west.

From the beginning of the Federal Republic, the Union could count on a 'Bürgerliche Mehrheit', a center-right majority (the SPD governments of Brandt and Schmidt were exceptions when the FDP jumped ship). Now the center-right has lost two elections in a row. The self-destruction of the PDS can only further help the SPD. At today's SPD party congress to approve the new coalition, Chancellor Schröder declared that 'now, once and for all, this is no longer a CDU country'. Unless the Union can find a new long-term strategy, it will stay that way.

(My figures are back-of-an-envelope calculations from the state by state 2nd vote results available from the Bundeswahlleiter, link seen at Toaster XP.)

2002-10-20T18:10:03+00:00

Spiegel Online: Rücktritt: Möllemann zieht die Reißleine (Resignation: Möllemann pulls the rip cord). After the anti-Israel flyer and now allegations that it was illegally financed, Jürgen W. Möllemann has announced his resignation as chair of the NRW FDP. Thus ends Möllemans second life in the FDP. Cats have nine lives, does Möllemann have three?

The New Old Blogroll

2002-10-20T13:10:10+00:00

I'm now including the update times in my blogroll like I used to. Blogrolling makes my data available as a chronologically sorted RSS file, which I can parse quite easily using the Magpie RSS Parser for PHP (thanks to Martin for the tip). Magpie chokes if any entities are in the file, but since I set the titles myself, I can easily avoid that. I do need to do a bit a parsing to convert the 'Last updated' string to a time/date I can use. One advantage over the data from blo.gs is that I can include sites that do not ping weblogs.com when they update. They land at the bottom of the list. Eventually I'll figure how to check them for updates as well (RSS feed? HTTP headers? md5 sums?).

<h4>blogroll (CET):</h4>
<?php
require_once('./blogroll/rss_fetch.inc'); #magpie rss parser
# in rss_fetch.inc I've set $CACHE_AGE to 60*10 instead of 60*60
$url = 'http://rpc.blogrolling.com/rss.php?r=ff5c543c6d32b2efee7f40bbb537da2d';
list( $rss, $status, $msg) = fetch_rss( $url );
$yesterday=strtotime('0:00 yesterday');
foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
    $t = str_replace(array('Last updated: ','on '),'',$item[description]);
    $t = strtotime($t);
    $fmt = $t > $yesterday ? "H:i" : "d M";
    $date = $t>0 ? date($fmt,$t) : '-';
    if ($t>0) $title = "Last updated: ".date('H:i:s',$t).
        " CET on ".date('l, F d',$t);
    else $title = "Last updated: unknown";
    echo "<a href="$item[link]" title="$title">";
    echo "$date $item[title]";
    echo "</a><br />n";
}
?>

Ping On You

2002-10-18T19:10:44+00:00

I'm not a TCP/IP expert, but I got to feel like one today. Our Notes admin Stefan was wondering why the virus checker in Leipzig wasn't able to download updates from the web over the Squid proxy, even though it was set up exactly like the one in Hamburg. The proxy even has the same internal IP, but it couldn't be found. And the proxy logs didn't even show an attempt to connect. So it's tcpdump and ethereal to the rescue. They confirmed that Notes never did try to connect to the proxy, but was trying to do a reverse DNS lookup on the IP address. The DNS in Leipzig must be broken, the lookup fails. When Stefan entered the hostname of the proxy instead of the IP address, the download worked. Even though the instructions say to enter an IP address. Go figure.

My Chaotic Life

2002-10-17T19:10:08+00:00

Mama's in Munich for 'media training' until tomorrow night, and Christopher is at his substitute Tagesmutter Petra, since Heidi is at a conference. Petra usually doesn't work afternoons, but keeps Christopher until 5 pm as a favor to us. So I make an extra effort to pick him up on time. Except this afternoon on the Autobahn, I hear a strange clunking from the back of my car just after the Elbtunnel. Pull off into an industrial area, and sure enough, the right rear tire has blown. No sweat, pull out the spare tire, get the car up on the jack, and pull off the bad wheel. It won't budge. It's stuck as if it were welded on.

Time to start getting creative. Call the auto club. Call Mama, who has Petra's number. Call Petra. Wait. Call Mama's sister-in-law to pick Christopher up... not home. Call Oma... she's home, and can pick him up. Call Petra to say Oma will pick up Christopher, and will even bring him to our house. A hour has gone by. Call auto club again, I'm next in line. Wait. There's the auto club car, but doesn't come to me He stops across the street! A guy there apparently called first. Wait half an hour for the auto club man to fix his Audi.

At 7 pm, 2 hours after my first call, the auto club car finally crosses the street to me. My wheel is rusted tight, says the auto club man. He pulls out a hammer and a piece of wood, and after about a dozen hits the wheel finally starts to budge. Change tire, fill out auto club form, call Mama to say everything is alright, call Oma to say I'm on my way, and arrive home 2-3/4 hours late. Christopher was nearly asleep, but wakes up when he hears me, takes an hour to settle down, and falls asleep on the couch instead of in bed.

This wouldn't have been at all possible to manage without a cell phone. There wasn't a pay phone anywhere near where I stopped. And in case you're wondering why my posts are few and far between and why I'm still using the b2 default layout... stop wondering.

World Series Tickets

2002-10-16T19:10:29+00:00

Scoble wants World Series tickets, but they are sold out. I remember 1987 in Minnesota, when the Twins somewhat unexpectedly stumbled into the World Series. We had followed them somewhat religiously that year, attending some 20 games (we would bike to the Metrodome and usually sit in the $3 bleacher seats). Once the team made the playoffs, we looked at our bank account and said, no, we couldn't afford any playoff tickets. Or World Series tickets. And we stuck to our decision. We watched Game 7 at a neighborhood sports bar full of Cardinal fans (our South Minneapolis neighborhood had a lot of black 'immigrants' from St. Louis).

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but that World Series marked a turning point for the two of us. For me, it was the beginning of the end of my graduate studies; 6 months later I had dropped out of graduate school. For Mama, her boss announced that fall that he was moving to Arizona, the beginning of a series of job changes which ended 3 years later in Germany.

Ping Test 2

2002-10-16T10:10:57+00:00

This is a test to see which URL gets pinged to weblogs.com. It seems to be https://www.papascott.de/index.php, instead of https://www.papascott.de/ as it was before I switched to b2.

Pictures for the Passport

2002-10-15T19:10:41+00:00

I finally got Christopher to the photographer yesterday for his passport pictures. Since the US passport takes a different format than German ID, we couldn't use the instant passport picutres, but instead had to pay for a portrait. Christopher was in no mood to be photographed, so he looks very skeptical. Back at the US Embassy website, I found more information on issuing passports to minors as well as an official form in PDF for Mama to give her consent, and also found out that foreign-issued passports are now produced in the US, explaining the increased cost and the long wait (2 to 3 weeks). That's probably good. My consulate-produced passport from 1994 is green, is not machine-readable, and looks like something I pasted together in my basement. It gets strange looks at every border I cross.

10-run seventh inning

2002-10-14T16:10:05+00:00

Star Tribune: Angels' 10-run seventh ends Twins' season. And now there's one less thing in the world to worry about, namely the World Series. Dave's Picks comments: "Baseball's a funny game sometimes. The bottom of the seventh in yesterday's game was not one of them." Amen.

The Disadvantage of Sidebars

2002-10-13T19:10:29+00:00

b2 includes a posting sidebar for Mozilla. It's handy for keeping windows open when typing a post. However, don't try switching to another sidebar when writing. I wanted to search Google for the last sentence of a post, hit the Search sidebar, and my post was gone. Oh well, it wasn't that good anyway. But it was better than this one.

Seventy-five Percent

2002-10-12T06:10:41+00:00

Thursday was the deadline for the employees to agree to the salary cuts proposed by my employer. Management had said that only with 90% agreement could lay-offs be avoided. I didn't catch the final figures, but at best only 75% are on board. The mood is one of awaiting the inevitable. I've never had so much quiet at work. I'm getting more done than ever.

Monsters

2002-10-11T18:10:23+00:00

Christopher is starting to become frightened of monsters. For example, I had thought that Monsters, Inc. would be a cute video for us to watch together, but after the first two minutes, he demanded that I turn it off. Since then, the couple of toys he has from that movie have been at the bottom the the toy favorite list (as in he throws them down the stairs everytime he notices them). And yesterday's Sesamstrasse had a theme of scary shadows that look like monsters, and the theme did not please him at all. He was impressed by on clip where the monster in Ernie's bedroom turned out to be a quilt. That became his mantra for the next hour. "Monster. Quilt. Monster. Quilt."

I was reminded of monsters by today's Bleat, which also provides an accurate description of what happens to a father's psyche when the mother is out of town for several days.

Extra Dry

2002-10-11T10:10:03+00:00

Quote of the day, seen at couchblog: 'It can't be that tough to catch an Arab pulling a dialysis machine behind him!"

OpenOffice

2002-10-11T04:10:56+00:00

My big accomplishment for this week was getting OpenOffice compiled and installed on FreeBSD. It was an accomplishment only in that it took nearly a day to download (130 MB over ISDN) and another day to compile (update to FreeBSD 4.7 first). Not that I have any real use for an office package, but sometimes you can't avoid having to use one. At work we are going to be cutting way back on the number of MS Office licenses (I think down to 20; we have 130 employees). The rest of us will have OpenOffice.

What Would Jesus Do?

2002-10-10T18:10:29+00:00

Strange mail today from the District of Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Mama's company car was caught speeding there, clearly visible on photo radar. The driver is not clearly visible, except that it is a male wearing a tie, and the authorities are asking her to identify the driver. According to her driver's logbook, she was on the road that day with the vice-chair (who insisted on driving) and a member of her company's German board of directors. So does she implicate her boss' boss, or does she stay silent and take the fine and the points (€50 and 3 points, according the the ADAC auto club) for herself?

Weblogs and your job

2002-10-10T04:10:20+00:00

After several cases in the States of webloggers losing their jobs because of their weblogs (I'm just linking two out of lack of time), we now have a case in Germany. She hasn't lost her job yet, but Simone of bluepixel (site now blank) has been given a Abmanhung (cease and desist order, legal step before being fired) by her employer for allegedly revealing company secrets on her blog. Examples of reactions are from Bloghaus, Sunflyer, Pepilog, Nico and Der Schockwellenreiter. All I can add is that a weblog is not a private place. It's public. You have to write as if your employer is reading every word, as well as your wife, your lover, your parents, your children, your enemies, and the whole world. Then again, if your boss is going to be such a jerk, you're probably better off without that boss.

Simone wrote often about how she'd rather be at the North Sea. Who wouldn't?