B. B. is the MAN !

His concert on Wednesday was just incredible. There's a man, 79 years old, and he had the whole house at his mercy. And his band, they are amazing. And he's still touring, just look at his work load. That demands respect. Man, I'd give an eye to be able to play with these guys !

So, that made me listen to some of his older records again (ok, they are CDs) - actually MP3s right now. One of the best is Indianola Mississippi Seed right there with Live in Japan.

So remember "Nobody loves me but my mother, and she might be jivin' too" !

Six Weeks

It took six weeks for my gmail account to get its first spam. That must be some kind of record, since I barely ever give out that address. Don't know what to do with it.

On the domestic front, the war is on again, off again. Not as bad as in Iraq, but emotionally devastating nevertheless. Time to do something about that...

On the better side of things, tonight's B.B. King concert at the Michigan Theatre. Can't wait for that one !

Future City is a blast too. I'm judging some SimCity designs now, got hooked up to that through the IEEE and my daughter's school.

My Sincere Apologies

My sincere apologies to all my friends in Europe. I really don't know what happened in this country. What got into my fellow countrymen. Voting like this - for 4 more years of Bush.

Let's see what will happen....

P.S. My mom is hanging in there, stay tuned

And then you hit a wall

Had to go to Germany on a moments notice. My mom was ill.

She had chemo-therapy, and developed an infection. She went to the hospital on Sunday. All week I called and tried to get something out of the three of them (my mom, my dad and my sister).

Mom: Su - We : I'm fine, I'm ok, nothing to worry about.
Dad: Su - We : She's fine, she's ok, nothing to worry about.
Sis: Su - We : I haven't had time to visit her, she's in the isolation ward, since her white bloodcell count is so low, and the baby and I got a cold.

Mom: Th : I'm tired, I'm too tired to talk.
Dad: Th : ?????
Sis: Th : I haven't had time to visit her, she's in the isolation ward, since her white bloodcell count is so low, and the baby and I got a cold.

Me: Well, could you please find out ? Do I have to come ?
Sis: No, not yet, but I'll find out

Mom: Fri : I'm tired, I'm too tired to talk.
Dad: Fri : ?????
Sis: Fri : - i left a message on her answering machine

Friday, noon, the phone rings here at work. It's sis : 'I'm at the hospital, I talked to the doctors, drop everything and come... It could be the end.'

So I drop everything, go home, call LH at 12:30 get a seat on the 18:05 flight out of DTW to MUC via FRA.

I get there Saturday at 1 pm... my mom's really bad shape....

More later...

Cruisin'

Cruisin along. School year started and things are falling into their place. Today, I slacked in the morning, decided to go in late - refreshing.

I coach a youth soccer team (kindergarten) and yesterday was our 2rd practice. Finally knew all the kids name (not an easy feat for me - with a pea sized brain and bladder - just kidding)

Nothing else to report.... stay tuned

Engage !

Things are getting back to normal. The school year starts. Alyssa is going to middle school now and Vincent starts kindergarten. Not like my old place of education.

Oh, yeah, have you heard, 31st of August got cancelled this year. They are having 2 1sts of September, so that school starts in September (like it used to) and not in August. :-)

Anyway, getting ready to change the rhythm all over because of school. And I'm gonna coach a kindergarten soccer (football for the rest of the world). Gonna be fun.

Still listening to the same old stuff, though I like Amiel's 'Just another .... lovesong' and some strange remix of Britney Spear's Everytime. I'm almost to embarrassed to post that here.

Economics and the drive to work

Back from the continent, where my wife and kids spent a month, and I spent a very enjoyable week. Saw old friends (but no absent lovers) and the weather was great.

Again, on my way to work, things kind of fermented in my brain, and several discussions from the last few days culminated into these thoughts:

a) the utility function of money is an interesting economical concept. The idea that 10 Euros are of different value to different people, based on their current economical situation, is definitely true. And if you got all the bases covered, the next 10 simoleans can be spent on luxury, while if you are struggling to make ends meet, the same next 10 simoleans are of different value to you

b) where the utility function of money fails though, is in this concept: the threshold function of money. Think about it, you spent the same 10 cents differently, based on what you want to buy. If you want to by a can of peas, you might pick a brand, based on it being 10 cents cheaper (you value price/performance) or on it being 10 cents more expensive (you value the value/quality). However, if you buy a car, you might not car about a 10 cent difference, even though mathematically speaking (and economically) 10 cents are 10 cents. So there's a definite difference to the value of the same amount of money based on what you are going to by (or in economical terms, what market you are in). Well enough, that is still covered by the utility function. However, some markets (like the IPO game, or luxury vehicles) have also certain thresholds, that you have to exceed, for you to participate. If you want to become a stock broker (in your own brokerage firm) you will have to have tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, euros or simoleans to play/enter. You might express this as a non-linearity in the utility function, but I think there's more about that.

Anyway, enough about these idle thoughts, back to work.

Nothing

What are we listening too now ? Johnny Cash - American IV - with really strong titles, like 'Hurt', 'The man comes around'. Now there's a man who's clearly been to the depth of the despair of depression and back a few times. Deja vu, been there and done that. God, that resonates. 'I Hung My Head' makes you never wanna touch a gun again. What foolish things kids do ! What foolish things I have done as kid !

Thanks to ordering it from Amazon I got a bunch of other stuff - Like the 'Live from Folsom Prison' cd and a bunch of books.

What are we thinking about - coworkers, old girl friends (the toast to friends and absent lovers), this stupid PC/104 board I'm working with, that makes my life a hell, and their vendor who claims that they are totally PC/104 compliant (definitely in the 99% tile).

I better publish this before they need to adjust my medication again

Le Tour hits the Pyrenees

Le Tour 2004 is getting into the mountain stages. Should be an exciting weekend for an old armchair racer.

What are we listening too ? A lot of Keith Jarrett - The Köln Concert - and I dug out Unreal Tournament to get rid of some of the aggressions.

The fam is still in Munich, where the weather is finally fine.

Another Neuron Firing

A long time friend of mine sent me a reference to the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (warning - legal German). How strikingly similar to the US-Patriot act.

This fine piece of legislature (the former) was passed after the Reichstagsbrand (Reichstag fire) on February 27, 1933 (one day).

At least they immediately told you what they were doing in the first paragraph (suspending several articles of the constitution). Maybe some people learned from those mistakes, and veiled their language in the second.

The fifth paragraph then introduces the death penalty on the following crimes: Hochverrat (Treason), Giftbeibringung (Poisoning), Brandstiftung (Arson), Explosion (Blowing Things Up), Überschwemmung (Flooding), Beschädigung von Eisenbahnen (damaging railroads).

This was past 5 years before World War II.

Hot off the press...

After reading an article in WIRED on RFID tags it hits me. If those are going to be in all the products sold in stores, they will be in all the garbage too (after all they are embedded in the products packaging).

The consequences are huge. Municipalities could actually charge manufactures based on the percentage of packaging in the garbage - an enormous incentive to reduce packaging (ok, this follows the German model of the 'grüne Punkt').

The Tour

The Tour started this Sunday (Saturday if you count the prolog). Check out details at the site french site or OLN TVs excellent english site.

Will Lance Armstrong succeed a sixth time ? The mountain stages will decide. I used to ride a race bike around upper Bavaria a lot, before the beer belly 120km on a Saturday was not a problem. The bike (custom built by my late uncle Kurt) is now in the garage, awaiting a much needed restoration. And then use of course...

On other news, Kerrin (my wife) and the kids will go to Germany (to the grandparents) for a month. I'm spending the summer on the continent. Always drama before they are on the plane. And lot's of work for me to do while they are not here...

Ready for the weekend

Things are back to normal. The troops returned from the field, and I can go back to doing the programming I like. Otherwise I'm preparing for the weekend. July 4th ? I wonder why the British don't celebrate that - he he.

Any holiday is fine and a 3 day weekend - heck even better. The spouse faction demands her share of time - have to go do this - have to go do that - what do you mean, you didn't know about that - we've been doing it every year - we always go to the fireworks on Friday and to the parade on Saturday - leave me alone, I want to go to barbie, and sit around and talk with people, who's opinion I like and care about, not people, who I can't relate too (and their bratty kids).

Anyway, that leads down the road to the subject of another rant, which we will not do right now. Right now, we will chill, take our medication and enjoy the fact that I'm reasonably healthy, loved by a few (see byline) and it's summer....

The 99% Rule

I'm donning my teflon/asbestos underwear today. On the way to work I ponder the 99% rule.

99% of all people are morons. While this is easily said, and almost as easily recognized and understood, it has some pretty far reaching consequences:

a) 99% of the people that drive on the roads behave like morons (q.e.d)
b) 99% of the people that you work with are also morons (q.e.d)
c) 99% of the people in your family are also morons ( 99% means 9 out of 10 people - so if your family has 10 members - 9 are morons).

Ok, c) might be too much. Statistics allows us to shift around a bit (if I sample a 1000 people, I have room for 10 +/- 1 or 2 genuine intelligent people). But it also means that if you look around (like at your family) and you don't see morons, then somewhere else in the universe, there's a bigger concentration of morons.

And how about time ? is it that 99% of all people are morons 100% of the time - or maybe just 99% ? I don't know about that. On gentle days, and believe me today is one, I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and like to say 99% of all people are morons at some point in time and on other days, it's 99% of all people are morons all the time, except that it is exhausting to be a moron all the time, so they have to take breaks too.

Back to the grind

After a nice weekend in Southern Ohio - it's back to the grind. First thing, that happens, is that a sales guy drops another redballinto my lap. A machine that I don't know, a software version that I don't know. All the software engineers, that know the machine, are on the road. Anyway, nothing I cannot handle, a few phone calls and voila. Except the production engineer does not call me back. <whine>. They always do that. When they are not running it's the end of the world. When they are up and running, they are happy and promptly forget to call anybody back </whine>.

Anyway, the bed and breakfast was a blast (http://www.strattonhouse.com). A beautiful house, beautiful weather - cruisin' in the 'Stang with the top down. Dealing with the wife is another issue. One minute your gathering wife faction points, the next minute ...

Why this

It's time to start yawl - yet another web log.

On the way to work this morning, I started thinking, I need to post some of these thoughts. Get it out of the system. So here goes...

What am I listening too now ? The Empire strikes first - Bad Religion: A good punk rock album. A couple of weeks ago, I went to TechEd 2004 in San Diego. On a two occasions I took a spare day and went up to LA (lots a baggage on that town) - they played 'LA is burning' on the radio stations - great song. I also like 'All there is' and 'God's Love'. This record plays great in my stang on the way to slave labor - ooops work I mean.

I'm also listening to Evanescence - a gift for father's day by my daughter - she's getting my sense of music (my wife - god bless her - doesn't !)