From the monthly archives:

May 2007

The Blueberry Hercules

31 May 2007

Frauke found an an interview “Der Blueberry-Herkules” at focus.de with Martin Coles, President of Starbucks Coffee International, on Starbucks slow entry into the German market…

Germany is a great market for us. All of our coffee houses are profitable. We sell a premium product, and the guests are willing to pay the appropriate price…. [...]

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Shock and Awe

31 May 2007

One rule I’ve been following when blogging about our new business is “no numbers”… which is too bad, since the numbers are the second-most fun part of the business (but not nearly as much fun as the people you work with). If you’re really curious, you can check at mcdonalds.de things like the average annual [...]

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links for 2007-05-30

30 May 2007

Digital Web Magazine – Capture a Screencast with a Mac (tags: screencast mac howto screencapture)

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T Minus 5 Weeks

28 May 2007

Five weeks from yesterday we go officially into business. We’re making continual progress… financing, staffing, and remodeling plans are on track, but not yet set. Today we looked at the newly remodeled restaurant in Bispingen with a “Gym and Fun”, 30 sq. m indoor activity area with basketball hoop and padded obstacle course. Christopher was [...]

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Pfingstsingen

27 May 2007

They were lucky, the rain let up this morning. More pictures of the wagon.

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Bolle took a trip for Pentecost

26 May 2007

I’ve mentioned Pfingstsingen a few times year, when (separate) groups of boys and girls go house to house on Pentecost Sunday and sing, expecting sweets or some money in return. The tradition is kept alive here in Lüllau… while we’ve heard of young men bringing a Pfingstbaum in other towns, but nowhere else with kids.

Since [...]

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It Was Thirty Years Ago…

26 May 2007

Hal remembers that 30 years ago this weekend:

The movie Star Wars (AKA: Star Wars: A New Hope) opened in theaters across the country and set the record for the largest grossing film to date. In my mind, which seldom accounts for much, there are only real three Star Wars movies called Star Wars, [...]

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New Look

25 May 2007

New Less hair, no beard.

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Karen King McDonald’s Ad

25 May 2007

The McDonald’s Corporate Responsibility blog links to this commercial (direct link) currently running in the US, featuring the career of Karen King, President of McDonald’s USA East Division. This could also have been Frauke’s career, except she she started a few years later and thankfully missed out on the lime green crew uniform phase.

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Mainstream

24 May 2007

You know blogging has become mainstream when the closing down of a blog hits a major daily newspaper.

Batgirl was a somewhat different sports blog with “less stats, more sass”. I’ll miss it.

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Alternative Sentencing

24 May 2007

Does the sentence fit the crime?

In Hildesheim, the founder of Heros, once Germany’s leading money transport company, was convicted (along with 3 managers) of embezzling half a billion Euros over 2 decades, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In Atanta, a former secretary for Coca-Cola was convicted of conspiring to sell trade secrets to [...]

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links for 2007-05-24

24 May 2007

UTF-8 support – TYPO3Wiki (tags: typo3 utf-8)

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Bergedorf

23 May 2007

“At the McDrive a dream came true”: Newspaper article on the opening of McDrive restaurant in Hamburg-Bergedorf, 1991

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Uptown

22 May 2007

Uptown Minneapolis McDonald’s, 1986(?)

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For Want of a Nail

22 May 2007

We’ve known for months that MamaMaus would have to give up her company car, and we’ve known for months that we would replace it with a VW CrossTouran. It’s roomy inside, and has a lot of surface area for company logos. We can also take advantage of the fleet rebate by ordering through McDonald’s. We [...]

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That Means You, Uri

22 May 2007

Everyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand.

(stolen and translated from treehugginpussy)

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links for 2007-05-22

22 May 2007

YouTube – FC St Pauli on Trans World Sport (British TV) (tags: fcstpauli)

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I Am An Eagle!

22 May 2007

This morning is the big meeting with the bank. In the middle of preparing her presentation, MamaMaus came storming into the living room. “I am an eagle!” she cried, which confused Christopher to no end. But if it helps to convince the Deutsche Bank, she can be whatever she wants.

Eagles work alone, so the vulture [...]

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SethBlog in Europe

22 May 2007

I’ve enjoyed following along with Seth and Holly’s trip to Paris and London at SethBlog (starting with D-Day for their departure up to Leaving London for their flight back home). I think it was their first trip to Europe, and it was interesting to re-experience looking at Europe through Midwestern eyes. It seems like they [...]

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Homepage

20 May 2007

“Homepage” is one of those Anglicisms that has snuck into German and means something slightly different than it does in English. It’s not quite as obtuse as “handy”, which in English isn’t even a noun, but is a bit confusing nonetheless. A German “Homepage” refers to an entire website, and not just the start page [...]

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links for 2007-05-20

20 May 2007

K2-Theme für WordPress lokalisiert – vernetzt (tags: german k2 wordpress theme localization) 30 Scripts For Galleries, Slideshows and Lightboxes | Smashing [...]

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Hamburg’s Coffee Mile

19 May 2007

Today’s Abendblatt has an article on Hamburg’s Coffee Mile on Grindelalle near the University, where 18 coffee shops are located on a 700 meter stretch. None of them are Starbucks. (None of them is a McCafé, either.)

The largest shop seems to be Balzac Coffee, which has 15 coffee shops in Hamburg, and according the Abendblatt [...]

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Rocket Revisited

17 May 2007

Just to follow up on our uncanny sense of timing in the stock market, 5 weeks after exercising a large (for us) number of McDonald’s stock options at $46.45, today the stock is selling at over $52. I told you that would happen, it’s your own fault if you missed out on the boom.

In other [...]

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im in ur serverz

16 May 2007

This seems to be Twitter’s maintenance graphic, as opposed to a plumber or a massage. Lolcats must be the new black.

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The Problem With No

16 May 2007

Cem just pointed me to the blog USA Erklärt which attempts to explain in German certain things about the USA. When I saw the entry on Why Americans Don’t Say What They Really Mean, I was struck by the passage

For example, it is considered crude to say “no” directly, therefore something else will [...]

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Dibbersen/Buchholz

15 May 2007

Now that official notice of the upcoming change in ownership has been posted in the restaurant, I am proud to announce that the first location of the Frauke Petersen-Hanson Systemgastronomie GmbH i.G. will be located at Harburger Str. 19 in Dibbersen/Buchholz, on the Autobahn A1 between Bremen and Hamburg. For us the restaurant is just [...]

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links for 2007-05-14

14 May 2007

Web Worker Daily » 8 Tips for Better del.icio.us Bookmarking « (tags: del.icio.us firefox tips tagging)

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links for 2007-05-13

13 May 2007

Feed43 (Feed For Free) : Convert any web page to news feed on the fly (tags: rss tools feeds scraper)

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Concrete

12 May 2007

Our plans for taking over the restaurant on 1 July are slowing becoming concrete.

MamaMaus’ last day of work at the office is Monday. On Tuesday she begins in-store training (at a company restaurant, not our future location). Her employment officially ends on 30 June. The papers for the GmbH will be signed on Wednesday. The tax [...]

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links for 2007-05-12

12 May 2007

Lets Do I.T. » Xen on Debian Etch (tags: xen debian etch howto)

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