From the monthly archives:

February 2007

Organic Foods

28 February 2007

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.

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Who Do I Sue?

28 February 2007

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, [...]

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Lothar-Günther Buchheim

26 February 2007

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 [...]

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Attempted Denial-of-Service Attack

24 February 2007

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 [...]

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My Not So Aching Back

21 February 2007

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 [...]

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pfSense: M0n0wall and more

20 February 2007

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 [...]

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links for 2007-02-20

20 February 2007

How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise “Intriguing piece by Po Bronson in New York magazine on the counterintuitive effects of effusively praising children for being smart:” [...]

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Bandwagon

19 February 2007

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 [...]

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Fasching, the morning of

19 February 2007

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 [...]

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Fasching, the night before

18 February 2007

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 [...]

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Hanging Out With The Goats

18 February 2007

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.

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Soundtrack of Life

16 February 2007

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 [...]

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Wrestlers and Comedians

15 February 2007

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

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Anti-Family Policy

15 February 2007

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 [...]

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Growing Up At McDonald’s

14 February 2007

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.

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My Obama

12 February 2007

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 [...]

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Volksmusik as a Product Defect

10 February 2007

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% [...]

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Could Be Winnipeg

10 February 2007

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 [...]

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Hello World, We’re Here Again

9 February 2007

C’mon everybody do you want something real? Can’t seem to get ahead but it’s no big deal Floating like a feather in a wide open space Landing in a perfect happy place

Today is my birthday. I turn 45 today. But instead of you wishing me happy birthday, let’s turn the [...]

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Wrong Passport

7 February 2007

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 [...]

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Conscientious Objector

7 February 2007

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 [...]

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Attitude

6 February 2007

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.

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Traction Times Ten

5 February 2007

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 [...]

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No Exception

5 February 2007

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.

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Bring Slippers to School

4 February 2007

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 [...]

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