Long time no news...

well for a lot time there were no posts, basically the reason is that we were very simple incredible busy and there were some slight changes. First we were running around and tried to find a patio furniture set for our backyard since about 2-3 months and finally found one

our backyard is coming together

We also finally manage to sell the motorcycle and now I'm trying to learn to live without one.

there goes 'rose'

And sadly I do miss it, even if I haven't really ridden it in the last 12 months for safety reasons...

I also attended a fundraiser for ovarian cancer with Robin and managed to finished 8th in my age group in a 5k run.

place 8 in my age group (30-35) and 169 overal out of  ~1000 attending people

I also spend a lot of time reading about how to build a doghouse for our puppies and somehow got a bit carried away and started to put a little woodworking shop together, but more about this in a future post.

we got a table saw, miter saw and thickness planer. Only the lathe, drill press and joiner are missing now...

And we finally managed to order a small little keggorator and a 50L keg of Franziskaner.

Why we love our 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee

now over the last 8 days of owning our new car we put exactly 500 miles on it so far and did several trips to stores like Home depot or other 'let us keep you money' stores. To work on our house and compliment it.

Now reasons why we love the jeep:

buying a bbq for the backyard - it fits

space for two adorable puppies

space for a out door patio furniture set

space for several 100 pounds of wood and stuff

and the gas bill for 450 miles of driving was not even to bad

Needless to say we are rather happy with it!

And our backyard looks nicer and nicer.

The magical transformation of a 2013 Porsche Boxser into a 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee

So Robin and I were dead set on buying a new 2013 Porsche Boxster in the next 3-6 months, because owning a Porsche was always something, which I never thought would be possible to obtain for me.

Well about 3 days ago, I got hit on the freeway by another Car, which totaled my 1996 Pathfinder/Puppy Car and made it not safe to drive anymore.

damage after getting hit by 4800lbs F150 Pickup Truck, the frame seems to be bend to and it's not really safe to drive anymore

So Robin and I set down trying to figure out what we need and a sexy sports car, was not really a possibility, since we need a useful car to transport our puppies (which are getting bigger and bigger) and get stuff for our house.

what we wanted to buy ~55k$

So we decided to get instead a car, which fulfills the following criteria:

• AWD or 4WD to be able to drive in Snow and go camping in offsite campgrounds
• not more than 5 seats
• enough space for the dogs in the back and 2 people + stuff
• load capacity of around 1000 lbs for House supplies
• able to tow a small trailer or jet skies, if we ever require it
• possible to have a roof rack installed
• somewhat fuel efficient (no V8 for me... I guess I will never own one now, since car makers are stopping to produce them)
• not more than 400$ a month payment

Now after I started my research and pointed out a couple of car's to Robin:

1500 Dogde Ram Quad Cab Pickup ~22k

2013 Toyota 4-Runner 4WD ~40k

2013 Toyota Tacoma 4WD ~35k

2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee AWD ~30k

And we decided to go with a Jeep Grand Cherokee, since all the Toyotas used to much Gasoline and the Dogde was the worst by far with a estimate gas mileage of ~17l on 100km and the Grand Cherokee was the best with about ~12l on 100km. It was a bit more expensive than the Dogde, but had all the features we wanted and satellite radio.

Now this sounds a bit funny to choose a car by a feature called Satellite Radio, but after using it for 5 minutes and discovering a dozen of stations I loved, It was a must have for me and Robin just loved the look and features of the Grand Cherokee and considered the Ram 1500 Pickup just too big.

Robin: The grand cherokee is a boat, but the Dodge is a flipping Cruise Liner...

She also found this cute 2013 Jeep Compass, which was a nice litte SUV and was just great gas mileage wise, but it was just to small for me and optical as physical (I did not fit behind the wheel) and so it was never an option. It was 10k$ cheaper than the Grand Cherokee, but if I don't fit...

So we ended up with this beautiful 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee, which has all the features we wanted and needed, for an acceptable price and is able to tow up to 5000lbs, if we ever need to and install a Class IV Hitch to it.

from the front, in our Drive Way

from the side

next to our Pathfinder, I assume it's going to be picked up by the insurance company soonish. The Jeep is significant larger

Now we are just looking forward to our next camping trip, with the Jeep. After all, it's already Basil approved.

Basil seems to like the large rear window

Pearl Habour

during my stay in Hawaii, I had togo to Pearl Habor, since this has been one of the most significant places in the States and especially the State of Hawaii in the last 100 years.

And sadly the security guidelines were so strict, that I could not bring my long lenses into the memorial to take pictures and was so limited to using a 10-20mm wide angle lens. Which basically means that I could get only one decent shot.

one of the old submarines in front of the memorial of the submarines, which sunk/disappeared during the second world war.

I actually really learned a lot at this particular part, for example that the average service live of a submarine was only 6-8 Month (just a guess based on the numbers, no statistical evidence available), before it 'disappeared' during the war. Yes there were some, which survived for 2-3 years. But most of them were lost on sea during the first 6 months of there service.

A new Toy...

After we put the Dog kennel together last weekend and the week before assembled the TV mount, I decided we need yet another tool. A decent miter/power saw to speed up this progress a bit. Using a handsaw just takes to long.

So today we went out shopping and got a new 10" Saw for 165$ instead of 450$. Because it was on sale and a part was missing from it. A simple wrench to adjust the blade, which turned out to be a 10mm Socket wrench. I got about 4 of them already, so not to worried about it.

Dewalt 10" Compound Miter saw,

Now I just need to create a plan to build the puppy house and get the wood.

Meeting in Hawaii

For the last couple of years now I wanted to travel to the state of Hawaii and thanks to a recent meeting I was finally able todo so and spend 5 days there.

Sadly I had not that much time to explore the things I wanted todo and forgot my contact lenes back in california. So not surfing/windsurfing or scuba diving for me.

So besides all the meetings to attend, developing quick software solutions on the fly and enjoying some great food. I did have time to take some pictures.

delicious oysters

one of these countless turtles of the area

the beach in front of our house

So Hawaii is definately quite nice and I do want to go back there sometime in the future, but I'm happy I didn't follow the standard stereotyp and got married or spend my honeymoon there.

Home improvement - Part 1 - creating a TV mount

Once upon a time, there were a certain kind of TV's around. They were called Cathode Ray Tube or short CRT TV's and they were big, no let's say huge and very very heavy.

They also had very interesting dimension and were sold till about 2005 and were replaced by LCD TV's around 2000.

Sadly our house was build in 1999, which provides a little cubical to put your CRT TV in, which is exactly 2 inches to narrow to fit our 42" LCD TV. And these days 42" is not even considered large.

before we got started. That is how it looks. 

our 1.5 x 1.5 inch side bars, after drilling holes for our mounting screws. There job is to hold our support bars later

apparently one of these anchors hold 75 lbs, to be sure I installed 5 on each side 

since I'm german I love precision. It's more or less perfectly level 

now the support bars are mounted to the side bars, with 6 screws each  

1/2 inch MDF plating to make it look nicer, but still looks a bit plain. But at least we drilled a hole to route our cables

after painting and filling in parts with putty, it starts to look nice 

and finally the TV is mounted and looks quite nice and seems to hold so far.

I also think that's the first woodworking project I ever finished from beginning to end. Only thing I'd like to change is to move the TV half an inch back. The proportions seems to be slightly off, looking at it from the side.

roomba is no more?

this morning we had an unlucky surprise.

Right now we have 3 puppies at our home, one is visiting and one of these little 'nightmares' decided to poop on the carpet...

Rather annoying, but it would had not been the big deal, except that unluckily our little roomba was running at the same point in time and we did not know about this accident. A short while later we come in the room, because of the 'curious' smell and see that the roomba successfully dragged 'poop' all over the room and was clogged with pooped and has literally shit in every crank and all over it's circuit boards...

several hours of cleaning later, it refuses to turn on and doesn't say a peep. I guess I will disassemble it again and blow it out with compressed air and clean all the sensors and parts again. But I don't have much hope at this point in time...

Update it does turn on now and only runs in circles, but the display works too after cleaning all the contacts with compressed air. There might be just the bumper sensor left, which could be clogged or so...

honeymoon - Part 5 Lanzarote

Our final and actual honey moon destination was the little town of 'puerto del carmen' in Lanzarote and I haven't been here for about 16 years.

So the next 5 days were spend with eating countless amounts of food and drinking a fair share of sangria, relaxing on the beach of traveling to some sights.

During our stay it just happened that Germany was playing in the Semifinal against italy and we promptly run into a couple of germans with there little flags at a local bar...

Since the apartment we rented had a small kittchen, we could take full advantage of the gorgous views of our balcony

and cook some small homemade dinners, with a glas of homemade sangria

While doing a tour of the National Park of Lanzarote (which name I already forgot, something regarding the devil)...

...Robin somehow managed to make me ride with her on a smelly, stinking and jumping camel.

During this tour we also stopped at one of the main craters, or better what is left of it and surrounded by the ocean.

and last, but not least fulfilled my promise to Robin, to have some good paella at our last night in town.

Which also gave her a nice chance to dress up and look absolutely radiant.

and back to the USA we go. The vacation was fun, but sadly like always to short.

Honeymoon - Part 4 Slagelse/Denmark

the 4th stage of our honey moon were 3 days in the Kingdom of Denmark. More precise in the little town Slagelse. Where we had to work for 2 days to install our second international BinBase system.

Sadly this also meant that we had no real time togo sightseeing and instead just walked around the town and spend a little bit time at the beach.

Now I really wanted to try some original danish food here, but for some strange reasons all the Danish restaurants (there was only one...) were closed for vacation and so we did the next best thing. We went to a real american steakhouse in Denmark, which was surprisingly good and we rather enjoyed the food here.

The only disappointment was that our airline went bankrupt and so we had to buy last minute $$$ tickets at the airport, to continue to our next and final stage. Lanzarote/Spain of the northwest coast of Africa.
Needless to say Orbitz is still stating it was not there fault and refuses to reimburse us for the additional expenses we had with this and I'm getting tired of going from supervisor to supervisor to supervisor in the hope to make them see my point. We know it's not there fault that the Airline went bankrupt, but it is there fault of sending us an email 'prepare for your trip', which does not state the fact that the flight does not exist anymore.

They also did not update there webpage to reflect this change, so the blame is theirs and that every person told us something different so far is not helping either.

Orbitz employee: Sir you missed your flight, this is not our fault
Me: mam, the Flight did not exist and we were not informed about this, the airline went bankrupt
Orbitz employee: Sir this is not true, your flight was just changed there was no bankruptcy
Me: please do me the favor and google the name of the airline, they declared bankruptcy 3rd of May, 2012
Orbitz employee: this is correct we send you an email regarding this
Me: sorry this email was never delivered
Orbitz employee: our records show..
Me: do your records also show that you send an email to me on 23rd of June, called 'prepare for your trip'?
Orbitz employee: yes, but...
Me: which airline and flight number is mentioned in this email?
Orbitz employee: cimber sterling, 545
Me: do you understand what the problem is
Orbitz employee: let me transfer you to my supervisor

And this game continues. At this point we raised them to get a voucher of 100$ instead of the standard 75$ and my response was, that we only have 750$ togo before I consider myself reimbursed and we like cash. Let's see when I hear from orbitz the next time...

Honeymoon - Part 3 Berlin

While being in europe, we had to stop by in Berlin for three short days and enjoy some time with the family back home. And the beautiful german weather.

This also gave Robin the possibilities to watch a german soccer match in a nice Biergarten and enjoy a Doenner. I know it looks like our priorities are always food. But it's just so tasty and we have to enjoy it while we are skinny and don't have to count calories :)

looks like my camera is getting old, the clouds are awful looking.

Since we had only a limited amount of time, we kept all our sightseeing concentrated around the Alexander Platz.

better half

this time the clouds look fine

And off we go part 4

Honeymoon - Part 2 Tarragona

after I short visit in Barcelona it was time to go to the beautiful little town of Tarragona, Spain and spend a couple of days here with Jesus working on the BinBase image, while Robin is discovering the area.

The interesting part is, I read about tarragona a couple of years ago in a book from Noah Gordon. Called 'Der Katalane/The Winemaker'. And this is a part of the statue described in the book.

human towers - a tradition from tarragona

During this time we obviously sampled plenty of original catalonian food, were introduced to Jesus amazing family and had all in all a couple of relaxing days. Which felt more like vacation than work.

And the best part, there is now a BinBase instance running in Spain.