From the monthly archives:

February 2006

Myth and Reality

28 February 2006

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)

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Karneval in Nindorf

27 February 2006

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.)

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All Jabber transports suck

27 February 2006

All Jabber transports suck, and all Linux distributions as well. Thereore, sys admins will always be in demand.

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One of the odd things about working remotely

24 February 2006

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.

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Dear Elena

23 February 2006

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.”

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Clowns instead of Figure Skating

23 February 2006

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… [...]

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Two Great Hypes That Go Great Together

21 February 2006

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.

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If You Can’t Trust Your Armored Car Company…

20 February 2006

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 [...]

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Rhythm of Life

19 February 2006

“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?

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Sex Goddess Tanja Hötzle

19 February 2006

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 [...]

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Wipeout

18 February 2006

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 [...]

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Every day, in every way…

17 February 2006

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 [...]

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Christopher and Kopaka

17 February 2006

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.

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Dead Last

14 February 2006

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.

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Chinese Google

13 February 2006

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.”

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Happy Birthday To Me

9 February 2006

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.

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Same Procedure As Every Year

4 February 2006

We’re gone. Again. To Leogang. In Austria. See you. Again. Same time. Next week.

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Bloggers are Often Self-Loving Eccentrics

3 February 2006

German Joys: “Bloggers are Often Self-Loving Eccentrics” (in Spiegel Online). Why “often”? Shouldn’t that be “always”?

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Mabber Me

3 February 2006

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 [...]

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