What a weekend ...

Man, last weekend was rough. Like many others, too many if you ask me, we lost power on Saturday evening and didn't get it back until Monday morning when PG&E temporarily fixed it. They permanently fixed it last night when we were again without power for another 4 hours. Now, of course, compared to some people in Almaden Valley, San Jose or some folks in St. Louis this is a short amount of time. But not when it is this hot and when you have small children. On Sunday afternoon, it was 97 degrees inside the house. We don't have A/C so we use regular fans in the evening to cool down our house and that generally is enough. However, when you lose power you can't even do that. And the weirdest part was that it was only one block of 23 houses in my neighborhood. As soon as you crossed a street, everyone had power. An old transfomer blew up. So what did we do? Well, friends of ours were kind enough to host Sonja and the boys for the day (Thanks Anke and John, and to your A/C unit). My friend and neighbor Brett across the street was (and still is) hosting our small freezer. And while Sonja and the boys were chilling, I tried to figure out how to cool the house somewhat so that we can at least spend the night. If it would not have been for our children, Sonja and I would have just pitched a tent and slept outside but our two boys need their sleep. So I bought a backup generator and another neighbor (Thanks Rich) helped me hook up the generator to the breaker panel so that we could use things in the house. We turned off everything but the fans and the fridge and that helped a lot. And I admit, at some point we turned on the dsl modem ... ;-)

Now all in all, it wasn't a major desaster but rather a big inconvenience. However, it felt great how our friends and neighbors helped and offered shelter, cold beverages and whatever else we could have needed. Thanks to everyone. If one of you ever needs a backup power generator in the future, just call me.

Changes ...

FW:
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

This is a picture of a very good friend of mine. She is also the godmother of my two boys and pregnant herself. When we IM with each other we always call each other things like "hottie" and some other things. We sort of always flirt in joking way. We are both married but not to each other. Anyway, now that she is pregnant, obviously her body is undergoing somewhat drastic changes. We tell each other a lot of things and she was telling me about some pregnancy related changes. I told here to send me a picture of it, so she used her camera phone and did just that. A couple of hours later she was complaining that I had not put this on my blog. Well, not wanting to be rude, here it is. As you can tell from the picture, you can probably guess which body part we were talking about. Very impressive, from 34B to 36C in just 15 weeks. We have a bet going on how large they will become but I won't share the details on that one .. Anyway, May when you are reading this, you wanted it here but I wish you all the luck in the world and keep my finger crossed that you will have a healthy and beautiful little baby come January.

Almost didn't make it ...

Image012.jpg
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

... to work this morning. What's that in the picture you ask? That's what's left of the rubber on my rear road bike tire. I was minding my own business in the bike lane when that tiny asian lady in her boring Toyota Camry decided to turn into the entrance of a parking lot and completely cut me off ... After she had sat in the turning lane for an eternity and I figured she had seen me, so I kept going. Turns out I was wrong and she started to cut me off. I grabbed the brakes as hard as I could, got out of my clipless pedals and started sliding towards her passenger side. Fortunately she saw and stopped so that I could hop onto the sidewalk and jump off my bike. Got lucky, this time. What did the lady do? Rolls down the window, flips up her full facial visor (you know, the black ones you always see on tiny asian women in minivans) and asks me whether I was alright. First I thought I should yell at her and tell her to never drive a car again but would it have mattered? Most likely not. So I picked up my bike and noticed a wobble in the rear wheel. Caused by the missing rubber. I was going abotu 20mph when this happened and it would have hurt. At least that's what I think. My heart rate after that was about 180 for a while. What's the moral of the story? Watch out for those people wearing full facial visors. They may not see you because they have that thing in front of their faces. And further watch out for that certain demographic. They simply can't drive or are just too clueless. I am glad my brakes worked and that I made it to work in one piece. At least I get to go to a bike store again and drool over those ridiculously expensive bikes.

A Thing of Beauty ...

Porsche announced a new version of the 911, the Targa. The glass roof top slides in front of the rear window. Check it out on Porsche's web site. Skydriving, a thing of beauty.

Math for dummies ...

Check out math for dummies (from Amr's blog). I wonder what math teachers/professors think when they read/grade stuff like that.

Made the deadline ...

The past few nights I spent more time on my computer after work, trying to finish a paper about some cool indexing stuff with some of my former friends/coworkers from IBM. We made the deadline of July 12, 11:55pm PST. For a while we were debating what this means for our situation since we current have daylight savings (PDT) but we figured it out and submitted on time. It was kind of nice to work on some of the stuff again that I worked on for over 5 years at IBM. Hopefully, the paper gets in to the conference (ICDE 2007), held next year in Istanbul, Turkey. The only thing that sucks about writing a paper in your spare time is that it meant to work until midnight for a few nights in a row and I think I am getting too old for this. Man, I am tired. Especially, since my kids still get up around 6am and demand breakfast ... ;-)
But it was fun nonetheless. Thanks to Dan, Linda and Jeff, and our friends at Corona and Spaten breweries, as well as the Taste of China.

World Cup 2006 - Bottom 10

Ok, let's move on to the not so pleasant things about the past World Cup. And let's not confuse this with anything else, these are my bottom 10, feel free to disagree. ;-)

1. Italy winning it all. Well, what can I say. I am German and was hoping for Germany to capture their fourth titel.
2. Diving. Too much diving, play the game and only fall down if someone makes you. The worst teams: Italy, Portugal, Argentina. The worst individual offender: Christiano Ronaldo from Portugal.
3. Brazil has to be the biggest disappointment of the tournament. No team chemistry, lackluster performances. I didn't mind at all seeing them leave the tournament early. Most overrated team.
   
4. Overrated and overhyped players: David Beckham, Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney. None of them showed that the hype about them was justified. Beckham had one goal, so what? Seemed out of shape to me. Wayne Rooney should have stayed home.
   
5. England sucked (Most overrated team after Brazil). Not one of the games they played left you with an impression that they are one of the stronger teams. Thank god the English fans behaved.
   
6. Zinedine Zidane's red card. I love Zidane as a player and what he can do with the ball and I always liked that he wasn't a diver. But his behavior in the final was wrong, regardless of what the Italian player (Materazzi) said to him.
7. Materazzi, the Italian defender who provoked Zidane. First he claimed he didn't do anything and then he admits he provoked him. What they really said to each other we probably will never find out. But when Materazzi's soccer carreer is over, he will make a fine actor, as most Italian and Argentinian players will.
8. The scenes after the PK shootout between Germany and Argentina. I am sure some German players weren't innocent in this but Argentina came across as poor losers.
   
9. FIFA suspensions. What are they thinking and what footage were they watching? The Italian defender De Rossi gets 4 games after elbowing the American McBride who required stitches in this face. He could play again in the final. The Argentinian third goal keeper kicks a German player into the midsection after Argentina's loss to Germany and gets 3 or 4 games. They suspend the German player Frings after reviewing fishy footage. In that same incidence, teh Argentinian Maxi Rodrigues leaps in teh air to punch a German player from behind gets the two games. Wayne Rooney gets a two game suspension as well. They apprently don't compare and go by the book. De Rossi should have been suspended for the rest of the tournament.
10. Players demanding yellow or red cards for their opponent. I say, any player who does that should be given a yellow card. Play the game, stop complaining and try to score honest goals not by diving and whining. Overall, it was amazing to see how many players returned from the dead in too many games after being barely fouled.
    

World Cup 2006 - Top 10

Damn, the soccer world cup is over, what am I going to do during lunch breaks now for the next 4 years? Good thing that the Euro 2008 is only 2 years away. Time to reflect, here are my personal top 10:

1. The fans and the atmosphere. Being from Germany and seeing the enthusiasm and excitement in Germany. Made me wish I could be there. It was also great to see how Germans finally waved their flag without having to feel bad about what happened in the past. At times there were more than a million people watching and celebrating on the fan mile in Berlin.
   
2. Germany's performance. There weren't a lot of people in Germany or elsewhere that believed in the team and Juergen Klinsmann. But the young group played well and made it far. Too bad we fell 2 minutes short in the semifinals.
3. Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian team captain. Superb defender and clean player. Only likeable guy on an Italian team full of actors.
4. Miroslav Klose, the German forward. Scored 5 goals himself and assisted on another one. Won the Golden Show award for best goal scorer in the tournament.
5. Germany winning on PKs against Argentina. Jens Lehman, the German goalie was awesome.
6. Ricardo, the Portuguese goalie, saving 3 PKs against England. Admittedly, the English PKs were weak but Riccardo didn't just jump into a corner hoping he would get lucky.
7. The Italian defense. Say whatever you want, it's often not pretty but very effective. And even though I hated to seem win it all they played the most consistent soccer through the entire tournament and they were always dangerous up front.
   
8. Maxi Rodriguez game-winning goal against Mexico in overtime. Clearly a lucky shot but nonetheless spectacular. Goal of the tournament.
9. Zinedine Zidane's ball handling. Fun to watch. His action that led to a red card in the final was not but rather makes it onto the bottom 10 of this world cup (see next post).
10. Phillip Lahm, the young German defender who lit up the left side with his runs and dangerous crosses. Scored the first goal of the tournament which was a beauty. Got Germany rolling, which was very important.

Yeah, I know, the list is a little biased towards German achievements but hey, it's ok to take a side here. I am German after all. Now let's move on to the bottom 10 of the World Cup, watch this blog for a post on that.

Fireworks are ...

... dumb, stupid, loud, annoying ... Do I need to continue? I never much liked fireworks and while I could live with the fireworks that are shot into the sky and light it up, I absolutely hate the firecrackers that just explode and make too much noise. My friend Dan put it nicely by saying that being at a party on 4th of July "resembled the Battle of Somme" more than a celebration of Independence Day. Why do I hate it so much? Well, for one thing, they scare my dog, they litter the neighborhood and they just make noise, so what's the point?
Apparently, a lot of people see a point in lighting up a firecracker and see it explode in front of them. I admit, when I was a teenager I did it too in Germany. Over there we don't celebrate Independence Day but use fireworks on New Year's Eve to welcome the new year. We did a lot of stupid things with it and I am not proud of it today. But pretty much, by the time I hit the age of 17 I stopped buying them because I think it's one of the dumbest ways to spend money. What is even more concerning is that some of these fireworks are put together for thousands and thousands of dollars. Where does the money come from? I sure hope that it is mostly corporate sponsor money and not tax dollars but even then, the money could be spent much better. I found a few articles online that in 2003 the estimated spending for fireworks was around 500 million dollars. Yup, that's right, that's a half billion dollars. How about donating it to schools? Or to feed the poor? There is places in the world, in which a few dollars a week can feed an entire family for a week or so and yet people choose to take their money and blow it up. Makes no sense to me.
At some point my little boys probably want to to blow up some firecrackers too and I am not quite sure what I will tell them why we don't want to do it. But they are young so I have a lot of time to come up with something. And if I am lucky (and all the dogs and cats that are scare senseless by the noise), firecrackers will be illegal or gone or at so heavily taxed that people won't buy them anymore.

The Dream is over ...

Watching the Soccer world cup throughout the last three and a half weeks was really cool. And it was fun and exciting to watch my home country go all the way to the semifinals. They have been better than expected and they put an entire nation into a World Cup frenzy. Even over here, more than 6500 miles away we were thrilled to watch the German national team win and, what's even better, play attractive soccer. Starting with group play, the expectations grew and the dream of winning it all became more real. Unfortunately, it ended today with a 2-0 loss to Italy, which weren't necessarily the better team but they were efficient. Germany has a very young team, and hopefully, 4 years from now, they will back to try for that elusive fourth World Championship. See you in 4 years in South Africa ... I am hoping now that France will go all the way. Not that I am very fond of the French, but I like Zinedine Zidane. In my opinion he is one of the best players of the last decade and it would be great to see him win a World Cup before he retires. I guess it's now Go Germany to win third place on Saturday and Go France to win it all.