From the monthly archives:

April 2007

Shop Til You Drop

30 April 2007

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 [...]

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Lead the World

30 April 2007

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)

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Back to Back

29 April 2007

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 [...]

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McDonald’s on Sabine Christiansen Tonight

29 April 2007

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 [...]

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Bridge Days

28 April 2007

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 [...]

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Cat’s Out of the Bag

27 April 2007

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 [...]

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American Power Conversion Kit

27 April 2007

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 [...]

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Corruption and Locusts

27 April 2007

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 [...]

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Fast Food Geography

26 April 2007

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 [...]

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Rock ‘n’ Roll High School

24 April 2007

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.

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Jura XF50

24 April 2007

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 [...]

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Sweater

21 April 2007

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 [...]

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Knut Wochen

21 April 2007

No, Knutmania has not come to this, not yet (via ChrisNux, who has some more examples).

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T-Shirt

20 April 2007

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.

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GmbH und Co KG

19 April 2007

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 [...]

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Lectures about Guns

18 April 2007

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 [...]

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Most Socially Responsible?

18 April 2007

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 [...]

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I Told You So

17 April 2007

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.

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Sex and Drugs

16 April 2007

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 [...]

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Rails is an ogre, and ogres have layers

16 April 2007

Mark Pilgrim: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Rails Developer David Heinemeier Hansson’s Response to Alex Payne’s Interview

(Disclaimer: My employer is about to deplay its first Rails application, and we admins are somewhat apprehensive about the performance implications.)

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Euro License

15 April 2007

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 [...]

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Founding the Business

14 April 2007

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 [...]

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Cem’s Back

14 April 2007

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.

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Coffee and the German Banking System

13 April 2007

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 [...]

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Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard delayed until October

13 April 2007

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. [...]

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Dreams for Sale: $46.45

10 April 2007

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 [...]

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Minicruise Photo Set

9 April 2007

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 [...]

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Nice Try, Mama

8 April 2007

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 [...]

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I Got the Bug

7 April 2007

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.

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links for 2007-04-06

6 April 2007

Forget the plumber, he means nothing to us Bloglines responds to a worred love letter from Jeramy Zawodny (tags: bloglines downtime plumber)

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