November 2006

Perfect Family Christmas

30 November 2006

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 [...]

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Are Eggs Liquids?

30 November 2006

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… [...]

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Should Americans Be Allowed to Marry?

30 November 2006

In New Zealand they are not so sure (Quicktime 14MB) (via In Actual Fact, and no, I hadn’t seen this before).

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links for 2006-11-30

30 November 2006

7 Google Reader Tips and Tricks — “Johnny’s Brain”.thoughts do {|t| t.blog } (tags: tips googlereader reader)

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Bringing Big Bucks By Blogging

29 November 2006

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 [...]

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Bild Hamburg Page 6

27 November 2006

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.

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Springtime in the Fall

26 November 2006

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 ((http://www.flickr.com/photos/papascott/sets/72157594392567520/show/)) this afternoon to [...]

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Impressions from Munich

23 November 2006

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 [...]

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Closed on Thanksgiving

23 November 2006

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 [...]

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The Pig Revisited

23 November 2006

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 [...]

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We Got The Pig!

19 November 2006

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).

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Interruptible Power Supply

19 November 2006

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 [...]

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Mama in the News

16 November 2006

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).

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Full House

15 November 2006

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 [...]

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Lazy Nigerian Spam

13 November 2006

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

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Not My Pod

11 November 2006

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 [...]

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links for 2006-11-09

9 November 2006

McDonald’s to cut trans fats in Europe by 2008 But they say nothing yet about the US (tags: mcd transfat)

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Macaca!

8 November 2006

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 [...]

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We Don’t Need No Education

8 November 2006

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. [...]

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links for 2006-11-06

6 November 2006

Boot Gentoo Minimal Install CD via PXE (tags: gentoo linux install pxe howto) How To Tag Minnesota’s Elections With del.icio.us (tags: politics minnesota mnpolitics) HOWTO sshd enabled livecd – Gentoo Linux Wiki (tags: gentoo howo install sshd)

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That’s Me in the Corner

3 November 2006

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 [...]

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Foreign Holidays

1 November 2006

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 [...]

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