kahunaburger

I use a Krups Water Heater for all my tea and instant coffee needs.

Today I looked inside the heater only to discover that a dead spider was trapped in the strainer at the top of the heater where the spout is. I had no idea how long it was in there, but I have to assume that the past few cups were mixed with spider juice. Bon appétit!

I don’t know why I thought of this today, but I considered it worth sharing.

Back in Germany at the beginning of my computer career I did training classes. I taught elderly secretaries how to use the Windows environment. Most of them did word processing exclusively. Things like WordStar (who remembers that one?) and WordPerfect. The keyboard was their only weapon and they were masters at it. Very few of them had used a mouse before they attended my training class (yes, I’m aging myself here). Teaching somebody to use a new input device and especially one as complex as a mouse, is not as easy as it may appear now. During the first day we usually learned how to move the mouse around the screen and get to all places on the screen.

One exercise asked them to go to the top left of the screen to access a menu. An older woman grabs the mouse and slowly moves it to the left. It wanders across the screen, but gets stopped 3/4 across, because the keyboard is in the way. I watch her from a distance as she moves the mouse back to the right banging it with increasing intensity against the side of the keyboard in order to complete the task. After several unsuccessful attempts she looks at her fellow students in the class, trying to get a hint on how to proceed. And that’s when the magic happens: she moves the mouse to the right edge of the screen. With her left hand she lifts the keyboard at a 45 degree angle from the desk and slides the mouse under it, managing to access the menu she was supposed to access.

I don’t know for how long I laughed – I think (hope!) that she never realized I was laughing about her.

Going forward my training classes included a segment where I taught people how to lift the mouse and relocate it without affecting the pointer on the screen.

I’m moving all my domains from Yahoo to NameCheap at the moment. Most of them are transferred already and kahunaburger.com is the last one. There may be some bumps in the road in the coming days as WHOIS and DNS information is moved. If kahunaburger becomes unavailable, it’ll only be for a short while.

And in case you are wondering why I move: the recent GoDaddy controversy made me take a look at the amount of money I spend on domains and I realized that Yahoo is way more expensive than other registrars. On top of that NameCheap offers some services for free that Yahoo charges for.

Dogs and I walked up to the mailbox today and retrieved the mail. As a previous refinance-attempt fell through (because of idiocy of the mortgage broker), I’m trying to refinance using E*Trade. I had some really good experience with them over the last few years and thought it would make sense to go with them.

In the mail was a letter informing me about my Credit Score results. Lenders are required to share that information with people who apply for a loan.

As expected, the Credit Score was close to what I expected it to be:

And further down in the letter it even says:

Nevertheless I just received a call from the mortgage company telling me that during the initial review my refinance-request was rejected. When I asked “Why?”, I was told that I don’t have enough revolving credit information. I asked the lady what that means and she tells me that I “only” have two accounts that show a balance – money I owe to somebody else (my first and second mortgage). Asked further how I can fix this and move forward with the refinance, she tells me that I need to be more in debt and show that I can handle the payments associated with the new debt.

I’m asked to take on more debt in order to become a more interesting and worthy customer. This is so fucked up that I can’t believe I have to write about this. Lenders should be like flies on shit on me, but they refuse it, because I’m not enough in the gutter. Twisted world we live in …

There’s a bird feeder right outside the kitchen window. I kept it stocked during the fall and fill it regularly now that winter is here. Around 6:30-7:00am the morning activities start, everybody seems to be coming for breakfast. And then something odd happens: around 9am there’s usually not a single bird to see. They come back at 10am and the feeder is almost constantly occupied for the rest of the day, but at 9am the birds seem to be busy with something else.

Anybody else see the same pattern? Is there a daily Stand-up meeting around that time? Puzzling …

No, I’m not talking about the movie with the same title, which tells the story of Nick Leeson and how he brought down Barings Bank in one of the biggest financial scandals in recent history (well worth seeing by the way).

I’m talking about my “investment” broker at Merrill Lynch. We signed up with him a long time ago while he was still at UBS Financial and gave him a nice chunk of money to work with. He came recommended by our ex-neighbour.

The first few years things went well and he managed to generate a nice return on the monies invested. We began to trust him. After the divorce, the account was split in half and in 2009 he moved from UBS to Merrill Lynch and the assets were moved with him.

Then in December 2011 I received a form letter from ML with information about the performance of the account in the last year. Here’s an excerpt from the letter (dollar totals redacted):

The important number here is the -34.26%. So in one year my “investment” account has dropped more than 1/3rd in value! At the same time all major stock indices are in positive territory lead by the Dow Jones at around 7%. Had I left the trading strategy to a monkey picking random stocks to buy/sell, I think I would have fared better. As far as the total amount in the account is concerned, I made a time warp back into 2007!

Once I saw the figures above I immediately pulled the plug and transferred all assets to E*Trade into one of their managed offerings. I emailed my broker several times and did not receive a single response from him, which only makes me believe that it was admission of guilt.

I heard from several other people who were also managed by him and they saw the same pattern over the last year. I reviewed trading activity for the last year and was astonished to see that he basically had not touched the assets at all during that period: no trades to liquidate one stock and purchase another one. That is very close to being negligent if you ask me.

On all my email communication I cc’ed the Administrative Manager for ML in New Mexico. Had I not done that, I think the whole story would have been brushed under the carpet. Now I’m almost happy to hear that the broker has lost his job with ML.

In hindsight I should have checked statements on a regular basis and should have moved the account sooner. It was my trust in him that made me think checking on him was not necessary. Lesson learned.

For Christmas I received a Moultrie Mini Cam (thanks Oakley!). Those devices are primarily used by hunters to find good spots for their next hunting. Once setup and activated they wait for the motion sensor to be tripped and snap one or more photos automatically. This works during the day and, thanks to the Infrared mode, also during the night (photos shot during the night are obviously black and white).

Yesterday I setup the unit to test it out. I pointed it at the dog beds, because I wanted to see what goes on there while I’m sleeping. This morning I found 40 pictures snapped during the night. Frisco moves around a lot and stretches on the rug on the right side, but he does stay around the dog beds. Max on the other hand walked around several times. I think he comes to visit me in the bedroom, sleeps in my bathroom for a while and then goes back to dog bed. Below is a snapshot from 1:15am:

It’s really interesting to see the activity during the night. Next I’m going to catch Pia sleep-walking …

Once a year companies take photographs of school kids throughout the country and they make a killing. Here’s Pia for this year. Cute – isn’t it?

Look what arrived in the mail the other day:

My brother wants to kill me and there’s nothing I can do about it. Thank you for the x-mas/birthday present. Much appreciated. Now I need to go out and find adult diapers for the day of the event …

Happy Birthday, SunPower Solar System! You’ve only been with me for around 6 months, but you already managed to generate 5.0 MWh of power (that was some time last week)! Since I installed you I’ve received checks from PNM ranging between $60 and $120 per month. I have not spent a single cent on electrical power. But what’s even more important to me is the fact that I reduced my Carbon Footprint by roughly 8500 pounds of carbon-dioxide. Thank you for that!

Yeah, it’s been a month since I updated the site. Just did not feel like it in the past weeks. Work kept me busy and creative juices did not want to flow.

If you don’t get a Christmas card or present from me, please rest assured that I did think of you and used thoughts about you when I made a donation to the two causes below.

Number 1 is the Santa Fe-local “Empty Stocking Fund” organized through the Santa Fe Community Foundation (https://www.santafecf.org/):

Number 2 is the Samaritan’s Purse (https://www.samaritanspurse.org/). This one does mention Jesus and the Lord in a lot of places (which seems unusual for me), but it’s also one of the few places that still supports North Korea and that was the goal of my donation:

Merry Christmas everybody!

Years ago I went on a trip to Mongolia. I looked over old photos the other day and today remember to look up the place where we went to. We were told that the area was called “Flaming Cliffs“, but Google Maps did not know about it. In my travelogue I had noted another name “Khan Bogd” and Google did know about that one.

So I went there and started to zoom in in order to find the Flaming Cliffs. After some scrolling I ended up at a large sandy area with a strange object in the middle.

Did I really just find a helicopter in the middle of the Gobi desert in Mongolia? And are those people to the left of the heli? So far I have not found another mention of the object on all the other “Google Maps Sightings” web sites …

… I still have a job. Thanks for asking!

This came in via an unsolicited email (aka “spam”), but it was worth posting:

During the night from Friday to Saturday Pia’s great grandma, Candice’s grandma and Betty’s mother passed away in Michigan. She was 93 years old and died in her sleep – the most fitting and deserved death to a great life.

Despite her age, I will always remember her as the Energizer Bunny of grandmas. She was still very active with very little medical problems that people her age usually have. She still traveled between Michigan and California and spent the colder months on the West Coast with one of her three daughters. You can see her in the photo below on the right at Pia’s first birthday for the red eggs celebration:

Red egg haircut

Grandma was a cook at heart and spent most of her life in the kitchen. And what a cook she was! I had the pleasure to sample a lot of her dishes and every single one was delicious and probably contributed to about 1-2 inches around my waist. Seeing her negotiate the preparation of several dishes at the same time was delightful. A knife and cutting board turned her into a wizard. It was her who instilled appreciation for Chinese food in me and I’m delighted to hear (after the fact) that she followed my excursions as well (for example, here).

Grandma preparing the turkey

This is the picture that will be engraved in my heart and this is how I want to remember her: in the kitchen preparing food for friends and family around her and enjoying every single moment of it.

If my life is only half as fulfilled as yours, I will consider myself lucky. May you have a wonderful kitchen wherever you are now. Rest in peace, Grandma!