From the monthly archives:

December 2006

I now declare this bazaar opened

31 December 2006

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.

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Decategorization

29 December 2006

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 [...]

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kleinschreiben ist ausländerfeindlich!

29 December 2006

(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 [...]

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links for 2006-12-29

29 December 2006

Bad Astronomy Blog » The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006 (tags: astronomy images)

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Christopher in the snow

28 December 2006

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.

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Fourth Holiday

27 December 2006

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 [...]

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Bleib Gesund!

25 December 2006

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.

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Dress Rehearsal

23 December 2006

Christopher is ready for the dress rehearsal of our church Christmas program.

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Christmas Chickens

22 December 2006

As seen from our driveway this afternoon. At least they haven’t crossed the road… yet!

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Google Reader

22 December 2006

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 [...]

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Schadenfreude

21 December 2006

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.

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OMG WTF LOL

20 December 2006

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).

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Wish Yourself Away

19 December 2006

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 [...]

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All About Us

17 December 2006

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 [...]

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Back In Old Europe

16 December 2006

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 [...]

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Dragon Babies

14 December 2006

Christopher Hanson, 2006, Ball-Point Pen on Ink-Jet Paper

What struck me is that the babies in the eggs have their eyes closed.

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Free education is elitist

13 December 2006

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 [...]

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Could Those Be Angels?

12 December 2006

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 [...]

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Your Servers Have A Private Office

7 December 2006

Today’s Dilbert sums up modern system administration.

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Mama Nikolaus

6 December 2006

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.

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Pinch My Grits

6 December 2006

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 [...]

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Job Wanted

5 December 2006

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.

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Christmas Market Monday

3 December 2006

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 [...]

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Do-It-Yourself Advent Calendar

3 December 2006

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 [...]

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Ronald Schill, please come home!

3 December 2006

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 [...]

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No Accident

2 December 2006

Headline from Spiegel Online:

Accident at Reptile Show: Crocodile Snaps, Circus Director Loses Thumb

Somehow that doesn’t sound accidental.

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Jim Knopf and Christopher

2 December 2006

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 [...]

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Major Medical Breakthrough

1 December 2006

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 [...]

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