I’ve adopted the same “bring your own bag” mentality when I became solely responsible for the grocery shopping here. However I always thought it was a nuisance having to remember that you have to bring your bags and, especially having a stash in the car “just in case”. Weeks ago I suddenly remembered that during my visits to Germany, my mom had a collapsible crate in the car. I did a quick search and actually found a number of suitable items. Here’s the one I ended up ordering: Collapsible Crate - Multi Colored.

I have two of them sitting in the trunk of my car. Whenever I go food shopping I bring at least one of them into the store. They fit perfectly under the shopping cart. At the check-out, instead of putting things into paper/plastic/reusable bags, I unfold the crate, sort my items and put them into the crate. Everything is neatly packed and pre-sorted. I drop the crate into the trunk and nothing can shift during the drive back home.

crate expanded

Back at home I take the crate from the car and put everything away. As things are pre-sorted, I’m not wasting energy by leaving the fridge/freezer open longer than necessary. Once the thing is empty, I fold it back down and return it to the car’s trunk for re-use.

crate collapsed

I hear those of you from Europe laughing out loud about this, but, please don’t forget, we have a lot to learn here: my trashcan is still three times as big as my parents’ one back in Germany and it gets emptied once a week instead of every other week.

If only one of you readers follows in my footsteps the time to write this entry was not wasted at all …

ShareThis

(the thumbnail above links to a 7104×1024 px 1.3MB JPG file)

The photo (actually 10 photos) above was taken this morning at 7:00am at the top of one of the Atalaya trails close to town. Very pretty!

ShareThis

After becoming a double uncle I decided to send some presents to the new family addition and because it was close to the other Tobias’ birthday as well (June 22nd) I added a “light” birthday present for him as well. Pia helped me to pick all the stuff and she also personally approved the presents. We are disorganized as always and in the 2nd week of June we went to the post office to send off the packet.
I asked the guy at the counter how long it would take to get the packet over to Germany. He said around 3 weeks or more. The “express” option was way too expensive, so I decided to head over to the UPS Store.
The declared value for all things in the package was around $150. I had to provide an itemized list of all the contents (never had to do that before). Ok - are you sitting? Let’s take a look at the shipping cost:

Yes, shipping was more than the contents of the package, however it was close enough to what I was quoted at the USPS, so I decided to go with DHL as the carrier. And before you ask: the package weighed 4.5 lbs.

I needed a Tequila after I put the shipping cost on my credit card - and it was only 9am in the morning: great start for a Saturday.

Sunday (a week later) 1pm, right after coming back from a 2hr hike, the phone rings. It’s the brother from Germany with “thank yous”. “you’re welcomes” follow. I mention in passing the extraordinaire shipping cost without providing a figure. He goes: “What? - We had to pay some Euros to receive the package!”. I go: “Are you kidding?”. “Nope - look at this:”

Elke and Marcus had to pay 12.32 euros in customs fees (”Zoll”), 38.43 in import purchase tax (”Einfuhrumsatzsteuer”) and 8.14 in other fees (”Sonstiges”). So that’s another $95 on top of what I had paid already.

My $150 present cost more than twice as much with fees/shipping/taxes added on top of it!

I’m afraid that’s the very last package I sent to Europe. From now on I’m only going to make purchases at international online stores like amazon.de.

PS: Dear niece/nephew parents - should Pia ever ask how the kids liked the rocks in the package, please say “they love them!”. After purchasing the real presents, Pia wanted to add some personal things to the package. One Saturday morning, while walking the dogs, she collected hundreds of little shiny rocks for Lisa/Tobias. They all ended up in the pockets of my shorts. By the end of the walk the weight of the rocks had moved my pants down to my ankles. She asked me to pack all of them with the other presents. I said I would, but I lied. Those rocks would have added another 20 lbs and I just didn’t want to spend $500 on the added weight. I hope you understand …

ShareThis

I’ll start this week

ShareThis

How about every one of us is donating a dollar, we hand the funds over to him and ask him to leave office now. No need to stick around until his term is really over. He could be fishing instead of waving at non-existent crowds. I’m sure he’ll like that idea.

ShareThis

ShareThis

In all those six years the router was running almost 24/7. I never had any real issues with it. In 2004 Netgear stopped supporting the device, because they switched over to a newer, faster design. Ending the support also means no more firmware upgrades.
In essence, my router stopped evolving in 2004. That’s not a bad thing if the device is rock solid and the world around you also stops evolving.

With the recent switch to CNSP, it became obvious that something was not working correctly. While still connected to Qwest’s DSL everything seemed to be fine. With the upgraded speed on the new line, I think the router’s age started to show. I saw weird traffic patterns from one Unix system and some odd behavior from one of my development systems. My VPN connection to work would also show strange slowdowns, with the following in the syslog (that’s the VPN concentrator in San Jose trying to talk to my VPN client):

Jun 19 13:32:47 netgear FVS318 Hacker Log[100982]:PROTO_TCP, SIP:192.150.13.xxx: 33599,
      DIP:208.3.81.xxx: 52597, Establish TCP Abnormally
Jun 19 13:32:52 netgear FVS318 Hacker Log[100984]:PROTO_TCP, SIP:192.150.13.xxx: 46298,
      DIP:208.3.81.xxx: 49226, Establish TCP Abnormally
Jun 19 13:32:58 netgear FVS318 Hacker Log[100986]:PROTO_TCP, SIP:192.150.13.xxx: 33758,
      DIP:208.3.81.xxx: 26960, Establish TCP Abnormally
Jun 19 13:33:03 netgear FVS318 Hacker Log[100988]:PROTO_TCP, SIP:192.150.13.xxx: 50945,
      DIP:208.3.81.xxx: 42286, Establish TCP Abnormally

One evening I did a quick experiment: I shutdown the FVS318 and replaced it by a dumb switch. No firewall, no packet inspection, no protection. Only one computer was connected to the home-network, because I did not want to expose all devices to the power of a raw stream of data. When I ran my tests again in the sans-FVS318 configuration I did not see anything weird going on and I saw much better throughput as well.

That was the nail in the router’s coffin. The same evening I ordered a replacement unit, again from Netgear. The new one (FVS338) arrived two days ago. Setup did not take longer than 5 mins and everything that failed before seems to be working now. Overall I’m more than happy with the purchase.

I know cable-guys, FIOS users, ADSL2 addicts will laugh about this, but do keep in mind that until recently I was stuck with a 1.2Mbps/700kbps DSL line, so this is a huge improvement for me (using Speakeasy’s Speed Test):

ShareThis

On Sunday morning she started to change into her new bikini at 6:30am (we did not leave until 9 Handy-Mannys later). She had breakfast in her bikini. She walked the dogs in her bikini. And she watched an episode of Handy Manny in her bikini (whoa - that’s as close to a paradox as it gets in this post!).

When it finally happened she was so excited and it was exciting for me to watch her enjoying herself. Target sold us one of the flotation thingies that just barely keep her above the water. If she were completely still, she would probably end up with her head under water. But if she just works a little bit, she stays afloat. I’m proud to report that she’s still alive and that I was able to sit next to the pool for prolonged periods while she was swimming all by herself. We are not talking about knee-deep kiddie stuff - no, this was the real thing: adult-depth ranging between 4 and 6 feet!

Add some more fun at a friends house coupled with chicken/fish skewers from the barbecue and you have a perfect sleeping pill recipe. We returned home around 8pm and that kid was asleep a few minutes later.

This was taken early in the morning (in a bikini, of course):

before going to the pool

ShareThis

ShareThis

Suddenly, he thought, ‘What on earth am I doing? I’m too old for this nonsense!’ So he pulled over to the side of the road and waited for the police car to catch up with him.

Pulling in behind him, the police officer walked up to the driver’s side of the BMW, looked at his watch and said, ‘Sir, my shift ends in 10 minutes. Today is Friday and I’m taking off for the weekend. If you can give me a reason why you were speeding that I’ve never heard before, I’ll let you go.’

The man looked very seriously at the policeman and replied, ‘Years ago, my wife ran off with a policeman. I thought you were bringing her back.’

‘Have a good day, Sir,’ said the policeman.

(via best of all jokes)

ShareThis